Hi,
I just joined, so it's my first posting. My English has often a strong French accent, so be indulgent. Mainly watercolour painter, I draw graphite pencils portraits from time to time. With the medias, I don't focus on these graphite portraits, as it's very difficult with journalists to succed to transmit two messages : animal painter and children graphite portraitist.
On a second hand, it's very difficult to have correct prints of a graphite portrait and medias thinks it's less beautiful in their pages.
Nevertheless the word to mouth works and I create enough to improve from a year to the next my technique . That is a "big" word as I 'm self taught and a rather young artist with just 8 years of practicing. I paint from photos that I have taken.
First , I want to avoid to my "subjects" the stress of posing that I have known when I was a kid.
Second, I know that after a while, they will become more natural with me and perhap's have fun playing to be the top-model of the day.
Last but not least, I think that creating the photo is a very important part of the artistic process. With years of experience, I developped a special skill in photo portraits, perhap's even a special touch playing with the light
Drawing a portrait, I try to be as close as possible of my original photo, but I don't want to be photo-like. loll that seems a paradox but it's not. Being photo-like would be to show the grain of the skin, more or less blurred. I chose to always show the strokes of my pencils, I never blur them nor erase. It's supposed to be an art work not a perfect copy of a photo.
This portrait underneath is not my favourite, but explain my credo.
"a good drawing is better than 10.000 words".
Hum! I should have erased the word "good"
