Friday, June 1, 2012

Sepia Portrait and New Tutorial


Bonny Chris
8x10 inches
Coloured Pencil on Canson Mi-Teinte Paper



This portrait is of my darling nephew Chris and a huge thank you to his Mum and Dad for allowing me to use their reference photo. By far the most popular portraits that I get asked to do are the graphite ones, but those of you who have been following my blog for a while will now that I generally steer clear of working with graphite as it is not my favourite medium. Hence the motivation for creating this portrait and tutorial. Sepia portraits are a lovely way of still getting a Monochrome look, but with a touch more warmth.
For anyone interested, this 17 page tutorial gives a step by step guide on how to do a sepia portrait, using coloured pencils. I also used zest-it solvent to give the skin a smoother look, however you can still complete the tutorial and portrait without using the Zest-it. For more information, please visit either my website or from my etsy store.

6 comments:

Debra Keirce said...

How sweet is this portrait?!?!

Unknown said...

Awww - thank you Deb. He's my nephew, so of course I think he's sweet too!!! :)

Mona Diane Conner said...

This is so beautifully done Karen, and your nephew is indeed a doll! I admire how you got so much depth in this in sepia rendering of Chris too.

Unknown said...

Thank you so much Mona - you know I love once I get to a certain point in a portrait when it almost feels like I am sculpting a face and maybe that's what gives it depth, I'm not sure. Sometimes it actually feels like I am shading around actual contours :)

Gail Burton said...

That is just beautiful Karen! I love sepia tones and may just have to buy this tutorial, lol! xxx

Unknown said...

Thank you so much for your lovely feedback Gail - I love the sepia too - it's a bit softer than the graphite and has such an old world feel about it!!! :)