I recently bought a wonderful book by Jane Davenport called Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces. Now, I already know how to draw and paint a face, so I wasn't in need of a how-to book on the mechanics of it as such. However, I'd seen enough of Jane's videos and blog posts etc to know that she does awesome faces and I love her style. And I always love to learn new techniques and new media. So when I saw her book suggested on Amazon, I bought it right away.
Let me just say that I truly LOVE Jane's book. She does provide instruction on how to draw a face and its features. But even better, she shows you how to draw and paint faces using a variety of different media. This is exactly what I love! I may have an art degree and I may be an artist myself, but there is always, ALWAYS, media out there that I haven't used, and different techniques that I haven't yet tried. And Jane's book provides lots of ways for me to do just that. She shows--with lots of step-by-step photos--how to do faces with Pan Pastels, Copic (or Tombow) markers, colored pencils, acrylics, and more. She also lists all the media she uses with each technique.
The technique I tried over the weekend was one I hadn't tried before, and it was her Glazing technique (on page 98, in case you're wondering). It was a little scary--it always is when I'm doing something new. And Jane even said of this technique that it would have an "ugly duckling" phase in process, and it sure did! But when my face was done I loved it! Here are a couple of photos; the first was my initial drawing and the second is my finished face.
Glazing is the use of a medium mixed with paint and then building up the layers of paint to create a finished painting. I used matte medium to create the glazes and followed Jane's instruction for this technique. I even used the art journal recommended by Jane in her book: it's a Strathmore Series 500 Mixed Media Art Journal. It's hardbound and the paper is deliciously thick and perfect for mixed media. I can see why she recommended it and it will surely become my new favorite art journal! I love how my face turned out. I don't think I'm done with the page yet; I'll probably add a background of some sort next time I'm in the studio. But I think this is a great first entry in my new art journal!
So anyway, if you're wanting a great book to help you either begin to draw and paint faces, or just to learn some new techniques and media you may have not tried before, then I highly recommend Jane's book, Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces. I would absolutely give it 5 out of 5 stars! And it's going to be a treasured (and well-used) book in my art book library.
