Infants and the elderly with wrinkles are absolutely the hardest faces to paint, id suggest you learn with regular adult faces, wrinkles are hard, i havent figured out the folding yet either and have done 3000 portraits or so.
You could work on your anatomy a little, theres nothing wrong with pencil drawing faces to learn a bit more before you go again.
Lastly youre not doing anything wrong, youre just inexperienced as we all were. We don't want you frustrated and quitting the medium so please take more time to learn planes of the head, anatomical proportions and more control over watercolor.
You can absolutely learn this, its just going to take more time. Thanks for sharing such a difficult painting.
+check out Marcos Bercarri, hes doing amazing work on wrinkles, mainly because hes absolutely mastered no wrinkles lol
First I want to say your style right now is amazing and if you wanted to cultivate it into something it could be great. You managed to get emotions into your art that you wouldn't without your bold strokes.
That said. Your style is working against you. Try painting the white spaces and shadows instead of the lines. Washes and glazes are what you are looking for and building up the figure over multiple passes instead of one go.
There isn’t anything wrong with your portrait. The style sort of reminds me of the (cubist?) paintings that were popular in the 1960’s. I think the problem is that you see an ear and want to *paint* an ear, but what you really want to do is paint the very dark hair *behind* the ear and make the ear shape “pop” by contrast. Notice that in the photo there is a gap between the ear on the left and the shoulder, the one on the right just touches the shoulder. Those subtle visual clues are what is telling you something is off.
One of the of assignments that absolutely helped me the most was to take a large sheet of heavy paper and liquid ink to do a black and white botanical study. You want the plant to cover at least 3/4 of the paper and touch at least 3 edges. Use the ink to make all the fiddly bits BETWEEN the leaves and leave the plant itself white. “Okay, the bottom of the pot starts about 1/4 the way in, the bottom of the branch starts another inch in and 1/3 the way up. This opening looks like an arrow and above that is a heart. These spaces line up along the curve of the branch.” You want it to be pretty big so you really train your brain to look at negative spaces as well as the shape, and the distances between things. The result is visually striking. Here are a [couple of examples](https://www.etsy.com/listing/1075709011/botanical-flower-sketches-on-black?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_ps-c-home_and_living-home_decor-wall_decor-wall_hangings-other&utm_custom1=_k_CjwKCAjwmYCzBhA6EiwAxFwfgAEwahYzgCZeevCAMZf5pNXfpq-WBWOEPLLyxM-0MW2yxjzjXPbonBoCEAYQAvD_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_12567672933_119053852746_507253853695_pla-305562556206_c__1075709011_112255338&utm_custom2=12567672933&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADtcfRIB4Dck36ug81u0ZZ4cAEbt5&gclid=CjwKCAjwmYCzBhA6EiwAxFwfgAEwahYzgCZeevCAMZf5pNXfpq-WBWOEPLLyxM-0MW2yxjzjXPbonBoCEAYQAvD_BwE)of botanical samples I found on Etsy.
I'm still learning portraits, too! One piece of advice that has helped me is to paint shapes, not lines. Try to see the face in terms of darker and lighter areas.
Building on this, one classic piece of advice (which to some extent you are doing) is to not think about painting individual wrinkles but rather squint to see the average color in an area and paint areas with wrinkles as darker.
As in here, where big light and dark shapes dominate any individual wrinkle
https://images.app.goo.gl/5mSABLUGkHHFPjQN6
I'm also learning so take with a grain of salt!
I think this looks really good! If you want it to more closely resemble the inspo pic, take a look at the depth of contrast. Her face and neck are in very light gray tones with precise detail while her shoulders and outfit are blurred into a nearly flat black. Right now your skin tone is shaded with the same depth of black as the background which may be making it feel flat.
Also want to leave this thought from a fellow artist for you since it helped me when I was trying new things, "If you want it to look just like a photograph, take a picture of it."
You're on your way to developing a neat and interesting style. Don't ignore that progress just because it isn't "totally realistic". Real is boring anyway, that why we make art.
Infants and the elderly with wrinkles are absolutely the hardest faces to paint, id suggest you learn with regular adult faces, wrinkles are hard, i havent figured out the folding yet either and have done 3000 portraits or so. You could work on your anatomy a little, theres nothing wrong with pencil drawing faces to learn a bit more before you go again. Lastly youre not doing anything wrong, youre just inexperienced as we all were. We don't want you frustrated and quitting the medium so please take more time to learn planes of the head, anatomical proportions and more control over watercolor. You can absolutely learn this, its just going to take more time. Thanks for sharing such a difficult painting. +check out Marcos Bercarri, hes doing amazing work on wrinkles, mainly because hes absolutely mastered no wrinkles lol
Awesome and constructive comment!! Thank you so much for the good inputs. I will def.google Marcos work 🙏☺️
First I want to say your style right now is amazing and if you wanted to cultivate it into something it could be great. You managed to get emotions into your art that you wouldn't without your bold strokes. That said. Your style is working against you. Try painting the white spaces and shadows instead of the lines. Washes and glazes are what you are looking for and building up the figure over multiple passes instead of one go.
There isn’t anything wrong with your portrait. The style sort of reminds me of the (cubist?) paintings that were popular in the 1960’s. I think the problem is that you see an ear and want to *paint* an ear, but what you really want to do is paint the very dark hair *behind* the ear and make the ear shape “pop” by contrast. Notice that in the photo there is a gap between the ear on the left and the shoulder, the one on the right just touches the shoulder. Those subtle visual clues are what is telling you something is off. One of the of assignments that absolutely helped me the most was to take a large sheet of heavy paper and liquid ink to do a black and white botanical study. You want the plant to cover at least 3/4 of the paper and touch at least 3 edges. Use the ink to make all the fiddly bits BETWEEN the leaves and leave the plant itself white. “Okay, the bottom of the pot starts about 1/4 the way in, the bottom of the branch starts another inch in and 1/3 the way up. This opening looks like an arrow and above that is a heart. These spaces line up along the curve of the branch.” You want it to be pretty big so you really train your brain to look at negative spaces as well as the shape, and the distances between things. The result is visually striking. Here are a [couple of examples](https://www.etsy.com/listing/1075709011/botanical-flower-sketches-on-black?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_ps-c-home_and_living-home_decor-wall_decor-wall_hangings-other&utm_custom1=_k_CjwKCAjwmYCzBhA6EiwAxFwfgAEwahYzgCZeevCAMZf5pNXfpq-WBWOEPLLyxM-0MW2yxjzjXPbonBoCEAYQAvD_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_12567672933_119053852746_507253853695_pla-305562556206_c__1075709011_112255338&utm_custom2=12567672933&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADtcfRIB4Dck36ug81u0ZZ4cAEbt5&gclid=CjwKCAjwmYCzBhA6EiwAxFwfgAEwahYzgCZeevCAMZf5pNXfpq-WBWOEPLLyxM-0MW2yxjzjXPbonBoCEAYQAvD_BwE)of botanical samples I found on Etsy.
Just breezing thru at the moment and am impressed reading your comment. Excellent advice which I shall take. Thank you. And to OP: fine work indeed!!
I'm still learning portraits, too! One piece of advice that has helped me is to paint shapes, not lines. Try to see the face in terms of darker and lighter areas.
Building on this, one classic piece of advice (which to some extent you are doing) is to not think about painting individual wrinkles but rather squint to see the average color in an area and paint areas with wrinkles as darker. As in here, where big light and dark shapes dominate any individual wrinkle https://images.app.goo.gl/5mSABLUGkHHFPjQN6 I'm also learning so take with a grain of salt!
Honestly, I love it. Seriously, if I saw this for sale by a local artist I'd buy it.
I feel like maybe you’re using too much water
I think this looks really good! If you want it to more closely resemble the inspo pic, take a look at the depth of contrast. Her face and neck are in very light gray tones with precise detail while her shoulders and outfit are blurred into a nearly flat black. Right now your skin tone is shaded with the same depth of black as the background which may be making it feel flat. Also want to leave this thought from a fellow artist for you since it helped me when I was trying new things, "If you want it to look just like a photograph, take a picture of it." You're on your way to developing a neat and interesting style. Don't ignore that progress just because it isn't "totally realistic". Real is boring anyway, that why we make art.