National portrait gallery observation
The pieces I liked the best from the virtual tour of the National Portrait gallery was the two pictured below, I unfortunately couldn't see the name of the pieces or the artist . The way the skin is painted, the pink hue makes them look flushed and healthy, it also has a good representation of the layers underneath.
Sketches
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I picked two references and did a colour study of each using pencils. My main aim was to try different ways of getting that depth in the skin and the tones. The first I layed down a base skin tone first and then went back out with the colours, the pecil i used for the base colour was slightly more way than the others so I did find that there was a limit to how much could be layered and blended overtop. The secon I layed down areas of colour around the face and added a small amount of light shading and then applied the skin colour overtop which also blended the colours already down into a smoother gradient due to the waxy pencil being used. I found that this worked better and was easier to work with as well so I used this in the final piece. I prefered the silhouette of the first subject however and I haven't done a side profile as of yet so I decided to use that subject reference.
Final piece.
The main improvement I would make to this piece would be to work more into the colours and add more blues and purples in areas of shadow as its a bit unbalanced now. I would also look again at the colours on the lips and attempt to use cooler colours as it's more of a deep red than a pinkish red in the reference. One thing I think went well was the shaping around the nose as the cool tones give a good impression of shadow which is contrasted by the pink around the edges of the nose.
Overall I am happy with this piece and although I do find working in coloured pencil a challenge I found a way to use them that suited me well.
After feedback
Second revision
References used for portraits
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