Portrait Love

I'm taking an online portrait class from Kate Thompson, which I'm thoroughly enjoying, although I'm a terrible online student I have to admit, and pretty much only do the lessons that look fun to me.  Fortunately I find most of hers fun, and so have been working through some of them.  Below are some of the results.

various pencils, charcoal

I've found that I just really enjoy doing portraits - they're just fun to me, once I get going.  For some reason it always takes willpower for me to get into my studio and start, but once I get into them, they're just FUN.  Add a little shading here, remove a little here, move a line a little and all of a sudden there's a completely new expression, it fascinates me how the smallest changes can make such a difference.  And I love that moment when I'm working on one and suddenly it turns from marks or paint on paper to a real person looking back at me.

Charcoal, gesso, pastel

This is another painting I did on one of my old prescription ledger pages after my first attempt at gelli-plating them (has that actually become a verb yet?)  Anyway, the pages do make for fun, textured backgrounds.