Hi everyone, here is a portrait I made last year of a Chinese gondolier I saw in Wuzhen. I really liked his expression. I'm open for critique!

I really enjoyed the lesson on shading the figure, I might have to watch it one or two more times to let everything sink in. I made these drawings after watching the video. The middle and right figure are from Grafit reference photos.

It's been a while! Here is a work in progress, a small drawing of my niece. Neither the coloured pencils nor the paper are of the best quality but I'm having fun nonetheless.

My first attempt working fully in gouache, from sketch lines to paint. I sketched directly with gouache instead of pencil, and it worked much better for me, it kept the whole process looser and more unified. I really love the face, though unfortunately I overworked it, the paper got soggy after too many layers, which dulled some of the freshness. When I wasn’t happy with the result, I washed over it with a light color, and that created a texture I actually like. It was a fun and valuable learning experience for the next one! The reference is a photo I took 23 years ago in China of a little girl with such a precious expression, the values were so rich that I’ve held onto it all these years. Finally, it found its way into a painting. ✨ You can see the process in the images below, the one before the last was my firsr disastrous attempt after the pencil sketch.

I've been meaning to get more familiar with gouache after a few (fairly encouraging) attempts a while back and my plan is to do more value studies before I go back to colour (because colour is scary). I did a block in a week or two ago and now finally got the time and will power to paint it. The whole thing is quite small - the actual painting area is about 10x15 cm. I think the subject needs no introduction - the one and only Poirot played by David Suchet. Lessons for the next time: I think I toned the paper too dark and also got a few ugly streaks as some of the crumbling dry paint got into the mix. I can see looking at the photo that some areas could be blended more as the bottom layer shows through the brush marks. It's not as apparent when looking at the actual painting though - for some reason photos paintings and drawings never look as good as in real life. I might need to focus on getting the paint consistency just right for good coverage.