My First doll pattern - sample

WhiteSample, originally uploaded by juliestenning.

I belong to the yahoo group UKFabricFigures, we are a group of people who are interested in fabric figures, mainly dolls. I also discovered a wonderful site recently, www. spoonflower.com who prints your own designs for a reasonable price. So, combining the two, I ran a competition; the participants created an image which could be printed on fabric and turned into a figure.

This is the first time I have made a dolls pattern and I used a "learning to draw" book to get the basic proportions. This was the first one I made to check that the pattern worked.

Fabulous Faces - Lesson 6 - Post 3/3

JulieStenning-Lesson6, originally uploaded by juliestenning.

This is the final image. When I'm feeling brave I'll try and get rid of the white blobs and dark line around the edge of the face. Tammy supplied an additional video on blending and it was very useful, despite the "blobs", the blending video really helped. I did this in my journal and the paper is too flimsy. The curls you can see which seem to match the curls on the hair are serendipitous - it is where the water made the paper buckle!

The words say "Wherever you go. go with all your heart" - Confucius

I now need to do more, I want to paint the next one on canvas.

Fabulous Faces - Lesson 6 - Post 2/3

Lesson6-NextSteps, originally uploaded by juliestenning.

This is the sketch before shading. I quite like it and may well use it again as a basis for another picture.

Fabulous Faces - Lesson 6 - Post 1/3

Lesson6-FirstSteps, originally uploaded by juliestenning.

Lessons 3, 4 and 5 now missed. Actually, that isn't quite true. Lesson 3 was about doing a three quarters portrait. I did one which was nearly OK but the the far side of the far side eye was pointed and you can't see that point on a 3/4 portrait. So, I decided to use a photograph as inspiration. I found one on the net and posterised it in Paint Shop Pro so I easily see the shading. I traced it onto my page so I couldn't get it wrong. The girl in the original photo is so so gorgeous and looks like a monster in my picture!

Lesson 4 was about profile portraits, which is this one. Lesson 5 is about adding elements and objects and lesson 6 is about mixed media backgrounds. These next three posts are for lessons 4 and 6.

The first image is the initial sketch. Her head looks far too big but her eyes are half way down the head. My natural instinct is still to draw eyes a third of the way down, but I measure with my thumbs and fingers now a days to make sure I don't do that.

Willowing Fabulous Faces

Willowing Fabulous Faces, originally uploaded by juliestenning.

Lesson 2 was about painting a front facing portrait. I was quite pleased with it.

Willowing Fabulous Faces - Lesson 1 - Part 2

Graphite Portrait, originally uploaded by juliestenning.

Following on from the previous post, this was my second attempt at a shaded graphite portrait.

Willowing Fabulous Faces

Willowing Fabulous Faces, originally uploaded by juliestenning.

Somebody asked me recently why I had disappeared from the blogosphere. I hadn't realised that it was three months since I last posted. I think the main reason is that I spent several weeks on a project that was in a competition so I couldn't post about it until the competition was over. That is for a future post.

Those of you who have been reading my blog will know that I have been doing various on-line portrait painting classes since December 2008. The latest one is Fabulous faces at willowing.ning.com. Tammy will be repeating the course and it will be available on DVD shortly. I recommend it to anybody who wants to draw or paint faces. This course covers painting front, three-quarters and profile portraits.

Lesson 1 was about shading - this was my first attempt.