More Portraits

I’m not sure if I should be posting my (mostly) daily portraits each day, or if it’s better to save them up for a once a week-ish post. Naturally, I don’t love them all and there are many I’d rather keep under wraps to save myself embarrassment. But, that’s not the point of this exercise. The point is to try things, and to actually take a hard look at myself and my skills, along with establishing a schedule of regular drawing and creativity.

I now have each portrait posted individually in my Flickr set, so it would be easy to just post them here the same way. I may try that for a while.

365:15

This is the same photo as #14, the swirly one, but I’ve used the “cutout” filter in photoshop. I love this filter! It makes everything look cool. One of these days I’m going to just go straight to colored paper with my scissors and try to be this filter myself.

365:16

See, totally cool. I added some leaves with a paintbrush before using the filter which brought in some nice accent color.

365:17

We spent two days in Washington DC which did not leave me with any time to draw, so once again, I’m relying on photos. Unfortunately, garbage in almost always means garbage out and even my favorite cutout filter couldn’t save this crappy photo taken in the Metro. It does honor our day in the nation’s capitol though and for that I’m OK with it.

365:18

Inspired by a poster I saw at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, I recorded descriptive words of my New Year’s day. Though I started the day feeling horribly hungover, I recovered pretty fast and the kids and I had a wonderful afternoon.

365:19

The next day was all about the fabulous but fabulously painful shoes I bought and wore to a reception at hubby’s work. I experimented with layers and a texture photo in Photoshop, but I think it looks pretty amateur (which is what I am, so I don’t know why I’m surprised). There’s no where to go but up from here.

365:20 and 21

Oops, I skipped a day and had to do two portraits on one day. Perfect opportunity to compare dominant and non-dominant hands. I moved the mirror from one side to the other to further the effect. Darn it’s hard to draw with my left hand! It might be fun to do this again with a big brush or something else kinda clumsy.

365:22

Ugh.

365:23

Skipped a day again. My daughter and I both got the book, “Wreck This Journal,” so I decided to use a page for yesterday’s portrait. I used my fat fountain pen and did not do a pencil sketch beforehand, so some placements are off. I think I’m getting better with the no-going-back-and-adjusting pen. It was fun incorporating the facing page and it’s directive too.

365:24

Since it was a two portrait day, the second one started with a photo. I used the Photoshop eraser to soften the edges, and then applied the watercolor filter. It’s not as great as the cutout one, but I like it just fine.

So,

I like the accountability of posting all the portraits to my blog, but is it terribly boring for readers? Should that matter? Is a once a week synopsis better? Less repetitive?