Lesson 34 Whimsical Portraits

Many people find portraits intimidating so for this exercise the goal was to have fun and not worry at all about achieving a likeness. We began by using photos which had been distorted in some way on the computer. Next we made a contour line drawing of the face by using a pen to draw around major shapes and lines of the image beginning at a focal point area. Finally we added watercolor washes to complete the study.

Teresa began with a photo which had been elongated horizontally so the shoulders and ears are way out of proportion. The resulting painting is still very appealing.


Nancy took a photo of a friend and elongated it vertically. She ended up with a wonderful, playful study built on opposing angles.


Jan used a 'pinch' function on her computer to squeeze in the features of the face and enlarge the hat. She added pen line texture in the background to compliment the wrinkles in the face.

Leslie used bold pen lines to create an interesting division of space in a super close up of an elongated face.