Sketches and Studies by Craig Houghton

Craig Houghton July 5th, 2007

Women of all ages across mediums and styles.

• colored pencil , graphite , charcoal , pastel , acrylic , pen , digital , figures , women , watercolor , illustrations , oil , portraits , ink , vids
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Craig Houghton April 29th, 2007

I don’t think I can get away with naming this ‘The Donkey King Returns to the Sea,’ but until I get that kind of pretentious absurdity out of my system, it’ll stand.

This is just a quick oil-sketch rip-off of Daubigny’s The Lone Cow, which I think should be named The Cow Princess Returns to the Sea. I really didn’t spend enough time on this, but I kinda like it.

• other artists , landscape , oil , animals
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Craig Houghton March 22nd, 2007

The photo is too dark, but here’s where the portrait WIP is thus far:

Next I’ll be getting in some real highlights, touching up, and maybe glazing in some more color.

• women , oil , portraits
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Craig Houghton March 22nd, 2007

Here are some previously unposted progressions for the potrait work in progress:

• women , oil , portraits
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Craig Houghton February 28th, 2007

thus far

• acrylic , women , oil , portraits
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Craig Houghton February 26th, 2007

I’m starting an oil over acrylic portrait of my girlfriend. I’ll do a step-through once it’s finished. Well, I will if it comes out half-way decent. It’s about time for a more detailed portrait.

rougher drawing on super smooth rag

then, refined contour drawing right over that using lightbox — I’m not going for a drawing here, just looking for confident lines to guide the initial block in

out of curiosity, I changed the rough to blue and contour to red to see how different they really were. They weren’t, really.

I applied three or four sanded layers of acrylic gesso to my canvas. it’s 14×18. here’s a before and after

I then transferred my drawing exactly as is (that was the point of the contour) onto the toned canvas by printing it in five sheets (in order to enlarge), rubbing black pastel on the back, and pressing that into the canvas like I was using graphite paper. The fifth paper, with just the face, was used to transfer the facial details so that I didn’t have to worry about the overlap from the 4 papers.

Then, I sealed the drawing in with a layer of matte medium. It smears the charcoal a bit, but the lines are perfectly intact, and that gave it some character. In the morning I’ll sand that back to keep things smooth and then I’ll do the acrylic underpainting. After that comes more acrylic and then the oils for a smooth finish — I hope.

• acrylic , women , oil , portraits
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