Julia Sawahla (3)

The third of the three Julia Sawahla portraits. The colours are, again, similar to the other portraits but last time I used no Light Carmine, and this time I used much more. I used Light and Medium Flesh (Lyra) as usual to build up the base of the skin tones, adding Luminance White to put in the lightest highlights. There is quite a bit of Polychromos Light Sepia in the darker areas and the face, and again, that lovely warm glow of Burnt Ochre (Polychromos). Venetian Red (Lyra) is the one I use for adding shade and there is Magenta and Sepia in there too. It looked a little flat but the Light Carmine really brought it to life. Around the eyes I've used Magenta, Purple Violet (both Polychromos) and Warm Slate Grey (Lyra) to create a cool contrast with all the warm tones. I used a Jakar battery powered eraser to bring out some highlights and strands (after putting down Sepia, Burnt Ochre, Venetian Red and Black) and then emphasising highlights with a White Luminance pencil.

For the hat I tried Vermillion (Polychromos) - a gorgeous orangey red - but it looked a little flat. However, adding Light Carmine on top, in loose circular squiggles, and letting the two reds show made it much more vibrant and brought out the knitted texture. Finally I added just a hint of white around the edges in the background.

I made a video - just a short snippet - of this drawing in progress here on my other blog.