Week 3 of Portrait Art Class

Adding colour

This week we tried adding colour, others in the class used different skin colours for the face, trying out blending techniques, and different colours for the clothing and background.  

I was not ready to add colour… so I didn’t! And that was ok. There was no pressure to add colour or do anything that we were not ready for.

I felt as though I wasn’t in the right mind frame to try something new and out of my comfort zone (or should I say I already felt out of my comfort zone doing portraits in a class setting so adding something else would have been just far too much for me). I knew that I would end up hating whatever I did and it would totally put me off, so I stuck with pencils this week and I am glad that I made that decision.

At the hallway tea break we had the opportunity of going around the class and looking at others’ work. I’m not sure how I felt about this, was I enjoying the work of others or was I comparing my art to theirs?  This can be a double edged sword, if you’re a positive person you will most likely be happy for the others and be glad that they have done a good job. However, if you tend to have a more negative outlook or you’re in a particularly fragile state you may end up comparing your own work to theirs and only seeing the negatives of your own work and all of the positives of their work.