Tips for drawing and painting a girl...

As you know, recently I've been obsessed with drawing and painting girls. I have only been at it for about a month but it's enough to debunk the myth that "I can't draw!". But let's not get ahead of ourselves here, I still think it's terribly difficult to draw and paint a realistic face but whimsical,  I think we all can do. :)

At first, I thought the eyes would be the most challenging part...but it turns out that the nose is the hardest. If you don't highlight the bridge of the nose, the face is just flat. If you try to create depth by introducing shadows, sometimes, it just looks like your girl has a bruised nose or maybe took the whole contour makeup thing a little too far...*LOL*

1. Use matte acrylic paint for the face and neck of the girl. If you are doing it in an art journal, craft paint would suffice. If you are doing it on a mixed media canvas for display, use artist quality paint for its lightfastness. Glossy paint would NOT work because you can't draw on top of it. You can add matte medium to your glossy paint to make it matte though.

2. Draw in the shape of the face and the features with a Prismacolor pencil. Don't worry about getting it perfect because when you draw on matte acrylic paint, it can easily be erased!

3. If it's still a little challenging for you, you can "cheat" by using a stencil or a stamp to help guide your process. These will help you in the placement of the key features of your face. 

4. Because of the wax in the Prismacolor pencils, you are able to blend the colours quite nicely. I'm partial to Prismacolors but feel free to use any colour pencils you have.

5. To paint the eyes, I use a combo of Posca white paint pen and Liquitex black ink in a Pentel Aquash brush. The Posca paint pen is filled with thin acrylic paint and you can buy them in various nib sizes for quick application. The Liquitex black ink is thin enough to be filled in a Pentel Aquash brush without clogging. You can also use Copics or Sharpies of course. Or just paint with a thin brush but this is easier. :)

6. For the hair, I painted it with Dylusions paint in Turquoise. I used my colour pencils to add some "movement" to the hair. Then I finished off with some Maya Road embellishments.

All the supplies used here, except for the Posca paint pen, Prismacolor pencils and Liquitex ink, can be found at Made With Love Singapore.