Author: kmgunnart

Charcoal portrait drawing: Harriet Tubman and the 100 faces art challenge

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I’ve been in a bit of a slump this year, as y’all may have noticed. In an effort to climb out of this slump, I decided the best way to accomplish that would be with an art challenge. Rather than wait for others to coordinate their schedules, I decided to challenge myself. For a couple years now, I’ve noticed the “100 faces” art challenge, and decided it was finally time to do that. Of course, I would be starting with drawing, and that means charcoal since I decided I just don’t love graphite anymore. I also decided to start the charcoal portrait drawing portion of the challenge with a personal hero of mine from when I was a kid.

collage of my reference photo of Harriet Tubman and my first two portrait drawings, one in traditional black charcoal and the other using a dark brown tinted charcoal
the start of my personal 100 faces art challenge and the historical photo I used as reference

The “100 Faces” art challenge

I actually haven’t seen much about the 100 Faces challenge as far as “rules” go, just that an artist needs to draw or paint 100 faces in whatever time frame. With such broad parameters, that left me free to make up my own rules. So, I decided I would do 100 portrait drawings and paintings, and I set myself an arbitrary deadline for the end of 2023. I decided I would officially launch this challenge on July 1st, so it would be a matter of drawing or painting 100 portraits of people in approximately 182 or 183 days.

I knew I definitely did not want to do the more rigid one drawing per day as my challenge, since that has tripped me up in more than one previous challenge. Sometimes, I just have a bad day when I feel as though I am fighting each stroke of the charcoal out onto the paper. There are even some days when I actually have plans that involve leaving the property! (We’ve really become such homebodies since the lockdowns.)

Finding reference photos for drawing portraits

The first criteria for using an historical photograph is to make sure we are as sure as we can reasonably be that the person in it is who we think that is. This may seem obvious, until you look up Billy the Kid and all the disputes about whether he is or is not in all but one photo.

I should probably also mention that the reference photo idea excludes quite a few historical figures simply because the technology had to be invented before it could be used. Again, that sounds so obvious, but does exclude anyone who lived and died prior to the 1840s. (this point will become important in the next post.)

I started my search at the Library of Congress website, and found my personal hero from childhood featured at that time.

Harriet Tubman, a personal hero

Original reference photo of Harriet Tubman, believed to have been taken in 1868
photograph of Harriet Tubman from Library of Congress website, listed as taken in 1868

I first learned about Harriet Tubman the year I was in third grade (if I recall right) by watching a documentary. At the time, I thought it was so cool to finally come across an historical figure who was a woman, and one remembered as being unusually brave. While I hadn’t taken very many history classes at that tender age of nine or ten, most of what I knew of history (Dad was a history major in college) was all centered around men doing brave things.

I actually started the first version of my charcoal portrait drawing prior to resolving to do the 100 faces challenge. I thought Harriet Tubman was the perfect subject for a portrait for Juneteenth, and intended to do the whole thing that holiday weekend. Something or other came up or distracted me that weekend, and I did not get the ball really rolling on that drawing until after the start of July.

Once I finally got rolling on it, the first portrait came together well enough. I discovered when trying to fix the one eye that this paper wasn’t an exact match to my previous sketchbook in that it did not take much erasing before it became noticeable (even though it was the same brand and specific type). So, I made a mental note that I would not be able to do much fixing of errors in this sketchbook and then moved on.

side by side comparison of reference photograph from Library of Congress and my charcoal portrait drawing of Harriet Tubman
side by side comparison of my reference photo and first charcoal portrait drawing

Recrop for a “closer” portrait

Once I realized I could not erase any section of paper more than once, I decided I wanted to do another version of this historical photograph. I wanted a closer crop of just her face for a more personal, intimate feel to the portrait. While the scan of the original photo is probably as high a quality as one can reasonably expect, there was still a bit of graininess to it by the time I cropped it down then enlarged it.

Since the photos from that general time period are often in sepia instead of grayscale, I thought I would have a little fun with the shades of brown in my tinted charcoal set for this second portrait. I’ve been trying to consistently post in-progress scans over on my Facebook art page, and after the first scan was posted I realized I needed to fix the features – the eyes were not even with each other and the line of the nose and mouth were off-center. Some careful erasing, and it was fixed “good enough.”

second charcoal portrait, this time drawn in brown tinted charcoal I simply call "Harriet" because it feels a little more personal, side by side with cropped reference photo
second charcoal portrait, this time drawn in brown tinted charcoal I simply call “Harriet” because it feels a little more personal

Traditional black charcoal versus tinted charcoal

Visually, the end results between the first portrait I drew in black charcoal and the second in a dark brown tinted charcoal are not very different. My very dark brown is extremely close to the traditional black, especially on the shadow areas where I tried to get it as dark as it would go.

The main difference in the “feel” of the medium comes down to how well the hard and medium black charcoal pencils hold a point, versus the softer tinted charcoal pencil. As I figure out on face number four, the tinted charcoal pencils really are not good for detail work and should be relegated to nondetail drawings or close-up portraits. It was an interesting idea, just one that didn’t translate as well as I hoped. Future portrait drawings in charcoal will be in the traditional black charcoal.

The goal of this art challenge

I have a very specific goal that I want to accomplish with this art challenge: I want to improve my people-drawing skills. I figure that by the time I get to my 100th face, whether it is a drawing or painting, I should see noticeable improvement over these first few efforts. I’ve been saying for a couple years now that I need to “knock the rust off” my people drawing skills I used to have, and finally decided to just knuckle down and do it.

The only way I will get better is by learning from my mistakes. The only way to make mistakes is to put medium to paper and “just do it,” as the old ad campaign said.

Feel free to follow along here on the blog – I will get caught up soon! – or on one of my social media accounts. I will definitely be posting to the FB page, as my friend Keashia is on Facebook and she has agreed to be my accountability partner on this project. As of writing this, I am on number seven – all charcoal portrait drawings so far, but I’ll likely try my pastels and paints at some point.

Spring time and baby goats

Published on by kmgunnart2 Comments

Springtime comes early here on the Florida peninsula, and the usual first sign on our property is the arrival of the goat kids. This year, the first baby goats were born on the 8th of February, a girl and a boy by Pepe (Le Pew) and Capri. Y’all may remember Pepe as the only boy from Francis’ triplets last February. I tell ya, kids grow up so fast these days.

Francis didn’t make me wait long at all before she kidded on the 11th. Only twins this time, and both boys … and they were almost the same size as Capri’s four-day-old twins. They were also both born hungry, and the firstborn – whom I am calling Fabio because he’s just such a handsome kid – was bottling even before he figured out how to keep himself standing.

All four of these adorably cute dirt monsters chug down the bottles like they are a high school football team. I have proof right here:

bottle feeding the goat kids at 1 week old

This year’s crop of kids (that grow as fast as the weeds out in the pasture!) is my first group that are linebred back to Prim, who died back in early September after reigning in the pasture as herd queen and “matriarch of mayhem,” even though she only had a total of four kids in her life. She was grandmother to all three of my current milkers through her son Harry Houdini, and also great-grandmother to both Pepe and William (formerly Billy the kid).

Shortly after we found her dead, I tried to draw Prim from a photo I took of her back when we first got her in 2016. Most photos I have of her are of her hind end as she either walked out of frame or turned away from the camera, so finding a reference photo that included her face was a bit tricky. I managed to succeed in finding one, and used my tinted charcoal to try to capture the Big Girl we remember.

drawing of Prim, my top milk goat from 2016 until September of 2022

It isn’t exactly her, but she often did try to elude capture out in the pasture. Why would I think she would be any different when it comes to trying to capture her character on paper? It only occurred to me today that I had forgotten to post the drawing here on the blog.

I still have one more nanny to kid – the original silly spoiled bottle baby herself, Cocoa Puff. I am expecting her to also have twins, but right now that looks to be another two weeks or more in the future. Until then, enjoy the baby goats bottling on the video.

(Also note: the music on the video was composed, performed, and mastered by my musician brother. He gave it to me as my Christmas present this past December – how cool is that?)

February Virtual Art Walk with baby goats

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I scheduled this month’s virtual art walk to happen this weekend, serenely convinced my nanny goats would not kid until next week at the soonest. And my goaty girls laughed at my hubris. So I thought I might sit this month out, but Jim Hughes applied a bit of arm-twisting on Facebook … so here I am scrambling to catch up on the art walk idea before the end of the weekend. There will be plenty of images for this post, because I am now up to four goat kids out back as the art walk group has grown to six this month.

New art walk participant Steve Estvanik

Another photographer named Steve joins our merry band of art bloggers with a fun post about dragons from around the world. I love some folklore, and find dragons fascinating. Also, I’ve long believed dragons to be a fanciful imagining of dinosaur fossils. This hypothesis just makes sense to me. No matter what you believe dragons were meant to be, they are a part of most cultures – except for ones from the African continent.

dragons from imperial China, symbolizing the power of the emporer
dragons from imperial China, photo by Steve Estvanik

Photographer and arm-twister Jim Hughes

Y’all ought to know Jim Hughes by now – he’s participated in all the virtual art walks to date and when I was going to sit this one out, he cajoled me to just use a previous blog post and toss it all together. This month he takes a look at … bricks. One of the themes in art is to call attention to things people might not see as art. The only thing he missed in his post was a reference to the old song Brick House by the Commodores. He even refrained from the obvious Pink Floyd reference. I also learned photographers love a brick wall to check their lenses for any distortion.

color photograph of bricks in a wall
Jim Hughes’ Bricks in color

Baby goat interlude 1: Capri’s first set of twins

Wednesdays I usually go up to Palatka, either for an appointment or for the new art group my friend Keashia has put together. This past week was an art group get-together … and I didn’t make it up there because Capri looked to be in labor. Francis was giving her plenty of space, and she was taking it. Around lunchtime, as the rest of the group was starting, I remarked to hubby that she’ll likely wait until after I would have been back home just to be a goat. That’s exactly how it happened. The first kid was born a little bit before hubby came out to feed the critters and put up chickens for the evening. The second was born as he was finishing up the evening feeding. One girl and one boy, with the girl looking just like her mother and the boy looking almost exactly like his sire, but with blue eyes.

Capri’s twins, girl on left and boy on right. Also, Pepe’s first kids

Sharon Popek photographs Chicago

Sharon Popek took a tour of Chicago at sunset, and captured some very nice cityscape images. The last time I was in Chicago was 2017 for my son’s wedding, and the thing I remember most was it was COLD coming up from Florida in mid-March. It was also cloudy the entire weekend, so I did not get to see anything quite as nice as Sharon’s photos.

collage of Chicago skyline at sunset from Lake Michigan
Chicago from Lake Michigan as the sun sets, photos by Sharon Popek

Dorothy Berry-Lound features purple

This month Dorothy Berry-Lound spotlights some of her artwork that incorporates the color purple, which is one of her favorite colors (as well as mine!). She even touches on not only the history of the color, but the associations in psychology and spirituality. Being the absolute geek that I am, I knew these, but apparently not everyone is as nerdy as I have always been. It’s a lovely collection of purple in art.

painting of Chinese girl holding musical instrument hanging on a dark wall
an example of Dorothy Berry-Lound’s art hanging on the wall

Francis has twin boys

After agreeing to just toss in a link on Friday, I went out yesterday to milk Capri in between thunderstorms. To my surprise, Francis did not come running up to greet me, even when I went over the electronet with the bucket of hay pellets they love so much. Hubby remarked, “I bet I know why …” and I was thinking the same. We walked up just after the first kid was born, and hubby went back inside the house to grab some old towels. If course Francis was on the far side of the pasture. We managed to move both Mama and newborn to the grassy spot of the kids’ pen as the thunder started rumbling again. After the second kid was born and both dried off, then it was time to bottle them. The firstborn boy, with the flashy white markings, immediately understood the bottle. The mostly-black boy wanted a better delivery system, but decided he could handle drinking his milk from a bottle. Both of these boys are larger than normal newborns, so it’s a good thing Francis didn’t have triplets again.

Francis and her newborn boys on the grass
Francis and her newborn twin boys. Yes, we really do have green grass this time of year in Florida!

Steve Heap’s photos of West Virginia and Hawai’i

Steve Heap is a familiar name for our virtual art walks, and once again he spotlights his artistic photography that has sold since the last time. His fans seem to divided between buying photos of West Virginia and photos of Hawaii. Funny but true: my mom called me the day before Capri kidded from her cruise of the Hawai’ian islands that she is on for her birthday. She called for one reason, to ask if I had baby goats yet. She did tell me a little about how much she is enjoying her trip, but mostly wanted to know if I had baby goats yet. My pick for this month’s image to feature from Steve is this panoramic image of Tunnels Beach on the island of Kauai.

panoramic aerial view of Tunnels Beach on the Hawai’ian island of Kauai by photographer Steve Heap

My watercolor Red Rose 2

Finally, the post I put in for this month’s virtual art walk is my watercolor Red Rose 2, where I used my line drawing as the basis for a line and wash. This is actually my first time using ink with my watercolor, and people on various sites seem to like it. Also, if you like the line drawing, sign up for my email list, as it is my free gift to subscribers this month. I will change the line drawing on the 15th of the each month for the entire year, to go along with the theme of 2023 being “A year for art.”

Previous virtual art walks

That wraps things up for this month! Since I am bottle feeding baby goats for the next eight weeks, I recommend subscribing to the email list. Not only will you get line drawings you can print out and color at home, but you’ll have new posts emailed to you when I publish them. With my usual springtime activities, I won’t be able to keep any kind of schedule until all the kids are weaned and chicks have hatched.

Watercolor painting Red Rose 2

Published on by kmgunnart7 Comments

I had another idea over the weekend: I will be showing how I use my line drawings that I offer free to email subscribers. My first example is using my watercolor paints to make a lovely red rose painting.

mockup of new watercolor painting Red Rose 2 in slim wood fame hanging above a piano
Red Rose 2 framed and hanging over a piano

Step one: Transfer the drawing

After I had learned that my grid lines and sketching lines might still be visible on the finished painting, I bought some graphite transfer paper. This way I can sketch it in my sketchbook, erase, and redraw however many times necessary until I am happy with the lines, then put the finished drawing onto my watercolor paper.

transferring the sketch onto the watercolor block
Transferring the contour drawing onto the watercolor paper

Because I inked the line drawing onto decent-weight watercolor paper, I actually needed to go back to the sketchbook for my original drawing. I think a standard ballpoint pen works best with the transfer paper, so some of my sketchbook pages are getting multiple colors of ink over the graphite or charcoal I use to do the drawings.

For this piece, I inked the lines with waterproof India ink. I used one of my husband’s brush pens to do it, since he has been very happy with how his drawings turn out using them. One of the brush pens is labelled in either Chinese or Korean, so I couldn’t be sure it was waterproof. The other he loves is a Pitt brand and says on the side it is waterproof India ink. I had first tried to use my calligraphy pen and ink, but the ink has dried too thick of a consistency to draw neatly.

Step Two: the background

I wanted a simple, single color for my background – and I have been just watching and waiting for the right opportunity to use this lovely teal blue that came in my QoR high chroma set. Seriously, how can someone who loves vivid colors (as I do!) not want to use this color? The only question I started with was, “How many layers to get the right level of saturation?” My answer is just one. I didn’t want it overpowering the main subject, but I also didn’t want an unpainted white.

the teal blue background only needed one layer of paint
the teal blue background (partially wet still)

Step Three: Get into the art zone and finish it!

I waited patiently for the background to dry completely this time to avoid paint bleed issues. Plus, the paper buckled because I wasn’t using one of the blocks (where the page edges are glued in place) so I had to wait for it get mostly-flat again. This is where the in-progress photos stop, because I got into the zone and just painted until it was time to wait for the next layer of paint to dry completely.

Working with red and green next to each other on the paper is a tricky thing in watercolor painting. If these two colors blend or bleed into each other, you can get a very unattractive color we often call mud. When you mix two colors that are opposite of each other on a color wheel, the result is somewhere between gray and brown. For a red rose with a brilliant green stem and leaves, I wanted the colors to be as clear as possible.

first layer of paint done
First layer of paint on the rose done

After this first layer dried, I went over the shadows again on both colors to deepen the shadows. Then I needed to wait for it to dry again to see if a third layer was needed. I used my Mijello Mission Gold paints for the flower itself, and this brand has very little color shift when dry.

So, with just one layer of paint for the background and two layers of paint for the rose, this turned out to be a rather quick painting! I just love it when everything feels like it is just falling into place. No need to wrestle the art onto the paper. It felt like it just flowed out from my brush.

Links to purchase this painting or prints

The original 9 by 12 inch watercolor on heavy paper is available to purchase here. If you want a larger or smaller art print of this painting, you can find the right size at my Pixels shop. To buy this printed on apparel, home accessories or even tech accessories visit my RedBubble shop.

finished painting Red Rose 2, watercolor and ink on paper, 9 by 12 inches, $100 USD
finished painting Red Rose 2, 9 by 12 inches watercolor and ink on paper, $100 USD

More red rose artwork

I am almost embarrassed to note that this is only the third red rose at any stage of bloom I have painted or drawn! I must remedy that over the next few weeks. My only other previous watercolor painting of a red rose is my Red Rosebud 1, which is a small watercolor sketch of the very beginning of the petals unfurling. The other is my Red Rose I did in oil pastel on canvas board.

Coming attractions

I will be doing at least one more of these before the month is over, so stayed tuned! Better yet, put your email address in the form and get your own copy of the printable rose coloring page and color along with me. I am feeling a new pink rose and/or white rose in soft pastel.

January Virtual Art Walk

Published on by kmgunnart7 Comments

Once again this month, a handful of us artists who blog our art have gotten together for a virtual art walk! While there are art walks scheduled for January down here in Florida, a lot of the country is just not feeling it due to normal January weather, so why not do the art walk idea online? We have a nice selection of virtual art booths to browse.

January virtual art walk preview image
January virtual art walk – a quick preview

Art walk virtual booth 1: Snowy Scenes for January

We’ll start this month’s art walk up north in snow country, where Jo Wortman of Siena Blue up in New York has posted a bit of a retrospective on her snow scenes. She does an overview of her snowy landscapes so far this winter, and compares them to paintings she did in 2022 and 2021. I can certainly see the difference, and like other commenters on her post, I think the watercolor painting where she worked from a reference photo she found on Unsplash – as opposed to following a tutorial – is her strongest in this category. It’s interesting to see how her earlier work hints at this.

snowy landscape of a stream in winter by Jo Wortman of Siena Blue
Jo Wortman’s snowy landscape in watercolor

Virtual art walk booth 2: Braving the cold weather

Jim Hughes lives in Minnesota, and that area gets COLD in the winter. That doesn’t seem to deter Jim in his quest to get a really good photo portrait of a pileated woodpecker. We have them down here as well, but they are definitely camera-shy. Jim unleashes his creativity to solve the challenge. He basically built a fake tree trunk and put a suet cake just inside it – close enough to his porch to get the photo he desired. Then he got up before sunrise enough mornings in a row until he was finally able to slip out onto his porch in subzero temperatures to get the shot. I think he nailed it.

close-up photo portrait of a pileated woodpecker by Jim Hughes
Jim Hughes’ detailed photo portrait of a pileated woodpecker

Art walk booth 3: Steve Heap takes us to Hawai’i

Next booth for our January virtual art walk is where Steve Heap of Backyard Image takes us to the Hawai’ian island of Kauai. I didn’t know this landscape existed until he posted about it, but apparently Waimea Canyon is called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. He starts his virtual tour at the ocean, and follows the canyon up to the mountain top. The part I find most interesting is his observation that like the Grand Canyon in Arizona (which he has also visited and photographed) he finds it difficult to capture the grandeur in most photos. Some clouds and a few rainbows helped him get good shots though!

a rainbow adds a splash of spectacular color to this photo of Waimea Canyon on Kauai in Hawaii
a rainbow in Waimea Canyon, called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific

Ben’s Angel: Painting and poem by Dorothy Berry-Lound

Hang on to your hats, folks. Dorothy Berry-Lound‘s virtual booth is a powerful one. She shows you the painting first, then tells the moving story behind the artwork. Then she finishes up with a poem to go with this powerful painting with a moving story … and wow. I don’t think very many people will be able to forget this one. I don’t want to drop spoilers, but when you click through, be prepared for this emotionally. This is about her last visit with a dying friend, Ben.

powerful painting Ben's Angel by Dorothy Berr-Lound
Ben’s Angel, painting by Dorothy Berry-Lound

Before you go

After browsing all these booths, I’d like to just remind you about my new idea for my email list: coloring pages drawn by me. It may seem frivolous after such a journey, but I like to say it’s the little things in life that end up mattering so much over time. I’ve decided to make the 15th of each month when I send out a new drawing y’all can print out and color, so tomorrow I will be figuring out the technical details to make this work. New email subscribers will get the current printable image once they confirm their email addresses. (Confirming your email address is an important anti-spam step that I require.)

I do hope everyone has enjoyed this month’s virtual art walk. Visit the other blogs, leave comments to let us know what you think and feel about the art, and sign up for an email list or five.