Friday, November 18, 2011

30. Cowboy Jim

My Friend Jim 8x10 oi/panel

Today's sketch is a portrait of one my online artist friends, Jim.  He graciously sent me some photos to practice with, and this is a close up from one of those. He is actually riding a beautiful gray  horse in this photo, but I like the  angle of this - looking upward with him framed against the western AZ sky.  I told him it makes him look larger than life! 

The light was tricky  - shadowed from the hat, but at the same time a spot of sun, and also reflected light from his shirt - all of this light bouncing around in various way.  Working from photos too requires some ingenuity, or maybe "make it up as you go along" because the values and color are never spot on like they would be working from real life.. so you gotta sort of choose a color palette and go with it. To top it off, my pr inter is almost out of ink, so I had to work with a really less-than-stellar printed copy of the photo.  

Anyway, it is all good practice - and that's what we're here for, right?

1 comment:

Pat Burns said...

Your reflected lights are wonderful in this one, Deb. Having just done those portraits, I can appreciate this better!