Hello beautiful moonbeam!

Thank you so much for signing up to Summer Goddess! I am super excited that you are here! Today I will show you how to create a beautiful mixed media portrait in a summery style. We'll use collage, paints and moulding/ modelling paste to create an interesting textured background!

I hope you have a wonderful time today creating our own Summer Goddess. I can't wait to see your work! :)

If you loved this lesson, make sure to sign up for any of my other mini Summer classes, you can find out more about them by going here: www.willowing.org/summer-series/

Supplies used for this class

• 16 x 12” Watercolour Paper – Hot Pressed – 140lbs (I use Daler Rowney The Langton)

• Watersoluble Crayons (Caran D'ache)• Graphite Pencil 2b (mechanical or other) • White Gesso• Brayer• Collage Papers• Graphite Crayon (optional)• Acrylics Paint in colour of choice (optional)• Blending Stump• Matte Medium (I used Liquitex) • Stencils & Modelling Paste

drawing a ¾ portrait

I tend to start a ¾ face very similarly to a front facing portrait! Here is a quick guide:

1. Start with an oval shape, sketch this in lightly, don't press your pencil down too hard, you'll want to erase quite a few of your lines later.2. Draw a vertical line 3/4s of the way into the oval (use this to guide you where to place the nose)3. Draw a horizontal line through the middle of the oval (this is where you will place your eyes)4. Draw another horizontal line through the middle of the bottom part of the oval (this is approx where the bottom of the nose will go)5. And again, draw another horizontal line through the bottom-bottom part of the oval (this is roughly where the mouth will end up).6. Allow for the space of one full eye between the two eyes.7. There tends to be a 'dip' on the right side of the face and all the facial features on that side of the face tend to have the right side of them 'disappear from view' so they tend to end up being 'rounded off'.

Obviously, many faces have all sorts of different dimensions, depending on ethnicity and simply differences in shape, so you can play with the above guidelines. I notice for myself that my noses actually end up lower than mid-way the second half and often my eyes end up closer to the edge of the face than might be realistic. Depending on your style and preferences, the mouth/ eye/ nose dimensions and ratios can be very different, but the above guidelines are based on the more 'realistic' type of faces. Try them out and then break 'the rules'. Do a Picasso type face, (or other) just to loosen up and play with different aspect ratios and placements of features. This will help you develop your own style!

¾ Eyes

Tips on doing eyes.• Only ever fully expose the iris and/ or pupil if you want your person to look startled,shocked or scared. To give your character a more relaxed expression, partly cover up theIris and pupil (see in the image above).• As a general rule, aim for the size of 1 eye between the two eyes you are drawing. This isbased on a realistic type of face. I notice that on my faces there is usually a larger spacebetween the eyes, so again, this 'rule' can be played with.• On a ¾ face, the right eye is partly obscured by the nose bridge and partly disappears from view where it edges the cheek/ face dip.

The ¾ Nose

Much of the shape of it is created through the shading. A ¾ nose has one nostril fully visible, while the other disappears from view (sometimes you see a little of it, depending on how ¾-ed your face is.

The ¾ mouth

Play with different mouth shapes. You can try out different lip shapes, thinner fuller etc.

For a ¾ mouth, the right side of both lips 'disappear from view', they tend to 'round off' on that side.

Here is the fully sketched face. Because we're doing a Summer Goddess I added a round circular sun shape around her and also ripple like shapes around her neck to give a cosmic/ universe feel to her.

shading your face

Colours I like using for shading :

I don't always use the same colours, but mostly I tend to go to the following colours in the Caran D'ache Neocolor II crayon range:

• Salmon for the first layer• Darker tones: pink salmon/

orangish yellow (gives a bit of a 'tan')/ cinnamon/ raspberry

• Mouth: raspberry/ red or magenta

• I also use my graphite pencil a lot for accents and darker shading

• For highlights and muting I use white gesso

There are many ways that one can shade a face. It all depends on where you assume the light is coming from. In this painting I assume the light comes from the left. This means that the right side of her face is darker but still catches some lighter segments too. Below I've detailed where I tend to place the different shading segments for this kind of face and assumed lighting.

Paying attention to detail

A face really comes to live when you pay attention to the little details. Small additional highlights, subtle gradient blending etc will add depth and intrigue to your face. So, adding little details is not something to gloss over!

Some important details to include to bring your face to live more:

Eyes – the eyeball itself is rounded and will have a small shadow cast onto it from the upper lid. Little reflective highlights in the eyes add sparkle to your eyes. The tear duct often 'bulges out' a little and therefore catches some light, hence there is often a subtle little highlight on it. The bottom and top eyelids both tend to be lighter in the middle than on both outer parts of the lids. Inside the tear-duct too there are sometimes some tiny small reflective highlights.

Nose – With this chosen lighting, often there is a reflective highlight on the outer nostril and on the nose bridge. Some darker shading at the bottom of the tip of the nose helps with the shaping of the nose.

Mouth – Assume the upper lip is darker than the lower one, yet there are variations of darker and lighter segments inside both lips. The two 'bulging out parts' on the upper lip that we all have on our lips can be a tad bit lighter and the bit in between them both darker. The bottom lip is lighter in its entirety but tends to be a bit darker in both corners and the bottom of it too is darker. The bottom lip is the one that has more actual bright highlights. Adding those makes your mouth 'glisten' a bit. On a ¾ mouth, often the main highlight is caught on the side of the exposed part of the lip.

Blending

2 ways to get some subtle blending going:

1. Use a blending stump, I love these babies! I use them mostly with my graphite, but you can also try them on crayons and even paint here and there though the effect is different.

2. 'Scrub' your paint layer in with a semi damp/ dry brush.

Creating the background

1. Add collage to the your background. Smooth out any air bubbles under your collage with a card or other hard flat tool and use a fairly good matte medium to glue them down (I use matte medium by Liquitex).

2. When your collage has dried, Add a layer of crayons over your collage. Choose summery colours that you like, place them all over the background and then 'activate' the crayons with a wet brush.

3. If you've lost some detail, with your pencil, bring back the hair line, neck and decorations.

4. To create a fabulous grunge effect, use some white gesso and a brayer and apply the gesso with the brayer over your background. Go over the hair and the ripple drawing too – this will create more cohesion.

5. When gesso is dry, sketch your background decoration using your pencil.

6. For a wonderful and textured background effect; use your stencil and modelling paste and paste it into the background.

7. When the stencilled modelling paste is dry, use watercolour crayons or pencils to add more colour and variety to your background. To make the sun stand out add a colour of choice to the inside of the circle.

8. Continue adding colour where you want/ need to the background until you feel happy with it.

Make sure to look your painting over for some final finishing touches and then, tadaaa; you are finished! :)

I hope you had a fabulous time creating your Summer Goddess today dear one!

Thank you so much for being here with me today.

Keep on sharing your creative gift with the world! You are loved! <3 Tam xoxoxox

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