Amarilys Henderson - Drawing and Painting Expressive Little Faces: Step-by-Step Techniques for Creating People and Portraits with Personality

Since the approach to faces in this book is like adding layers and elements from a menu, creating with a layering method makes sense. Pencils are great for the start, but well drop them pretty quickly. Pencils encourage us to adjustdare I say, obsessand thats just no fun. We want to save our creative energy for asking what about this? questions as the piece progresses, not as we rethink whats already on the paper.

What I appreciate about painting in layersbeginning with light colors and broad strokes and ending with tiny detailsis that we watch the subject emerge. Who doesnt love a good hyperlapse video on Instagram? Its like watching an object float up in the water, its characteristics becoming more pronounced as it reaches the surface. A light blob comes closer and closer until they can be enjoyed in high definition.

Other mediums will be introduced and used in this book, but youll quickly see that my preferred medium is watercolor. Its translucent, its fast, and its accessible. My practical side is pleased that I dont have to squeeze tubes and clean up after use. I can make a color lighter or darker with water. Its semiopaque finish and the way that watercolor effortlessly blends into different shades and hues is very true to reality. An orange ball has flecks of yellow, red, and brown while shadows on a white wall often have violet, blue, and yellow. How much more profound are the colors of nature when created with deep complexity and texture?

Before I end my flattery of the wonders of watercolor, I must add one more important feature I mentioned above: watercolor forces us to create fast work. With watercolor, we must work quickly to make decisions and commit to whats in front of us. What might sound like pressure is actually very freeing. This process will impart a pass or fail and then move on approach.

But I dont want you to set up camp at good or bad. There is a shift in responsibility that needs to happen in creating if your goal is to not go mad. It is this: the piece plays a role, too. We tend to think that, as its creator, we are solely responsible for the outcome of a piece. Id like to challenge that philosophy with the concept that we are conduits of creativity. Ill often look at a finished painting and think to myself, so thats what its supposed to be! in amusement. The final work is often a surprise to me because the initial picture I had in my mind is not whats in front of me. Created works will live on, be interpreted by other eyes, replacing the rough draft I created in my mind. A birth is always full of surprises!

Take the pressure off. Your faces will be what they were destined to be all along, as long as you make them come into this world for all of us to enjoy!