My project for course: Artistic Portrait with Watercolors

This was a great course to seriously start my watercolor journey! I have experience with a lot of mediums, but watercolor is one I've not used in any proficient way at all. I got my first set of watercolors late last year and I started doing the "obvious" thing of trying to mix colors on the palette to match skin tones which ... no. Looked so muddy and bland. I bought this course specifically to go outside of that method - when I saw how Mr. Casanova was mixing complementary opposites on paper to achieve skin tones, I said. "That's exactly what I need!"

I used the palette suggested by the teacher (arrived from Spain in just a few days!) and got to work on the course.

My first portrait attempts were pretty awful. One thing I was doing was going too dark, too early. Another thing was overworking, which gave muddy, flat results. Also, working from a poor reference photo proved to be hard to overcome. I still have not been able to be as loose as I'd like to be for this method. I think that will come with time, to do a piece with fewer layers and fewer strokes.

I am submitting 2 of the more successful projects - two musicians I admire, FM Einheit and Serge Gainsbourg, though neither are perfect likenesses.

A part of me wanted to keep going on this one to darken colors (particularly on the left side) but I decided to leave it so as not to overwork the piece. I think it still works and I think the more subtle bounce light on the left cheek is sort of interesting as is.

I feel like this one needs a gold halo behind Serge's head, haha! Saint Gainsbourg. I didn't know how the mustache and beard stubble would do when I first started, but I think the blue does well to show that.