retrato de gabrielle

i recently completed a portrait.  a sort i have never done before; using a medium ground.  the last portrait of this sort was about 9 years ago but i did not spend the same sort of time for detail.  my portraiture is sporadic and inconsistent but i know i can do it.  even though, when i am laying down the values i often feel like it's all going to mush-up.  but i trust my eye, and eventually it all comes together.

i forget how many hours into this i am at this point.  up to this point i was working 2.5 to 3 hours each session.  maybe this is the third session?  i'ma slow artist.  i don't practice or do enough portraits so i'm not suprised by my speed.

i had to use my phone camera to document these photos so please forgive the compression artificats.  still, this closeup gives some feel as to the texture present in the portrait.  from a distance it continued to come along pretty well.

i would continue to make "distance checks" to make sure nuances were coming through.  my eyes started to "white out" or flash because i wasn't taking enough breaks.  so in addition to making the "checks" i actually did have to get up and walk around.  don't you hate that!?  haha

the above is perhaps the fourth session.  after this i'd go back and forth between adding more values to the shadows in the right side of the face to filling in the hair and trying to grab those subtle curls in the darks of the hair.  i took this photo because i simply wanted to catch the face once i completed it.  for no documentary or practical reason except, i really like this person.  and it was much like any photograph i am compelled to take - it is a response to quelling that expressive emotion that occurs in your spirit.

the portrait was rendered on canson mi-teintes steel gray paper. i used a 9x12" piece of machine-cut bond paper to cut out the piece from the canson sheet.

initially i started with graphite pencils, but i illustrated too many values with them before i started in with the prismacolors. fortunately i was able to use the graphite and mix it in with the warm grays i used. in addition to the prismacolor warm grays i also used white and black. instead of using tortillons(blend stumps) i opted to use various values of grays to blend with. this canson-select paper held up pretty well under all my value layering. i think i laid down 5-8 layers of value. i underestimated the necessity to really dig in the white and i didn't get the highlights as high as wanted them but i compensated with another layer of shadow.

"once" (title ~ multi-lingual homonym [spanish for "11" and english "in the past"])
started 11 the 16 2011 completed 7:05am 11 the 24 2011. total draw time 15.5 hours.
final dimensions: 9x12" (above image cropped)
fixed with grumbacher final matte fixative (which, dang - fixative is always expensive and i'm not gonna use hairspray)