I purchased a DVD of Tamara Laporte's online course "Fabulous Faces" off of her Willowing website a couple of months ago.  I loved the short lesson she gave on drawing faces as part of her free "Art, Heart and Healing" course so I wanted to give this more in depth course on faces a try.

When I was showing my mother some of my drawings she asked me why I decided to start my foray into art with faces which are one of the hardest things to draw.  I can't really say except that I find that is what interests me more than anything else.  I keep practicing faces and copying ones I find in books and magazines in an effort to find what I would call "my face" as in the face I most feel like drawing.  I haven't found it yet, I figure in the long run it will likely be a combination of all the different faces I have learned to draw through the many online art classes I am taking.  Yes, I may be becoming an online art class junkie but I do think there are worse habits out there to pick up, and really it is a lot cheaper than the shopping addiction I used to have.

So anyway, back to topic, here is the first face I drew after watching the first weeks video from "Fabulous Faces", she is done entirely in graphite.  I have to say, while the nose is far from perfect, noses continue to challenge me.  Although maybe they challenge me because I let them intimidate me...hmm...food for thought.

Here is a second paint-over collage painting that I did based on Tamara Leporte from Willowing's technique.  I took her workshop over at 21 Secrets to learn this technique and I have to say it is a lot of fun to do.  I love the change from the original collaged look to the finished painting. 

Here are the before and after pictures:

I have been working a lot on faces lately.  I am kind of trying to find my face, the one that I want to draw so I am experimenting with a lot of different materials, shapes and styles.

Here are three ladies that I drew the other evening.  They aren't perfect but they are quite different from anything else I have done.

Below are a couple new art journal pages.  They aren't my best work but my goal with these was to focus more on using new mediums that I haven't tried before so the result vary but I had fun working with these new to me products.

The background and face on this first page are done almost with Tombow watercolor markers.  I used acrylic paint for the tree, sparkling H2O watercolor paint for highlighting and a white conte crayon to add some highlights. 

This second page is done using Faber Castell aquarelle pencils with a little bit of marker for adding some shading. 

Today I spent pretty much the whole day painting.  It was lovely!!!  I spent most of the day working on two of the workshops from the 21 Secrets Workshop.  I have watched a lot of the videos and incorporated a lot of the tidbits into my art but I haven't really done a lot of the workshops from beginning to end so I devoted today to that purpose.  Below are the results of my "Paint Over Collage" workshop with Tamara Lapore.  I am so inspired by Tam, she is actually the reason I signed up for the 21 Secrets workshop, although I have to say I have been blown away by all the workshops. 

If you are interested you can still sign up for 21 Secrets, just click on the button to the right or the link above and it will take you there.  The workshops will all be available until the end of July so you still have lots of time and the instructors are SO amazing. 

So here is the collage before I started painting...

And here is the finished "painted over" work:

The inspiration for this came from Tamara Laporte over a Willowing.  She does some amazing paint over collage work that is stunning.  I didn't do the collage, this was the first time I had tried this method so I wanted to just keep it simple. 

This is a magazine photo which is painted over with heavy bodied acrylic paint and then the features are drawn and painted back in.  I have to say even though it is far from perfect I am quite happy with the way this turned out.  I know I should have put more highlights in the hair but I actually preferred the dark, rich tone as it is.