My Dad in Sunglasses

My Dad in Sunglasses is a personal project that built on what I had learned on my lessons about drawing, visualisation and concept art in year one of university.

For a long time both before and during my university course I felt I had problems with drawing people and realism. It was something I felt I really needed to work on to improve the quality of my art and make a piece I can be proud of in the future. On the flip side our tutor had us draw Leonardo da Vinci's Grotesque portrait of a man. Drawing the exaggerated features was fun but it was on my second time drawing the picture that I both managed to get to grips with the facial features and play around with colours.

I really like how I used colour in this piece. With the warmer red and yellow colours used for lighter tones and the blue used for the hair. This allows for the purple to be used as a good in between colour that wont clash with other the red and blues. As a result the colours work well together to both contrast the areas I want to be contrasted without it feeling harsh or out of place. I found using colour like this fun and wanted to experiment more with combining it with realistic proportions instead.

My Dad in Sunglasses is a portrait of my father. Much like my previous drawing I used warmer colours to show where the light is brightest and cooler colours to show shadow. For the time of drawing this was technically my best portrait drawing. People who know my father have immediately recognised it as him and I feel I captured his features well and accurately. The colour work I also feel is a good upgrade as its more complex and and is used to show off more of the subjects features: if you compare my two pieces of art I think you can see that I leaned further in to having the colour represent skin. By having an undercurrent of green as the base colour it subtly brings the blues and yellows together so that they never seem out of place despite having more dramatic and varied tones. The green also help keep neutral areas of colour where the skin wasn't really light or dark.

I think what I am happiest the most about this piece is that you can tell I cared about the subject. There's a depth of respect and care that I hold for the subject that I think is shown in this art.

The next step after this would be to draw and colour something realistic. There is a project I am currently working on, that I have been which I started after this one, that when finished, will be the next step up in terms of my skills as an artist.