Practicing my Portaits

I had always wanted to master the art of portraiture. It is my frustration and one of my life-long dream. I had always use traditional graphite ever since. And it was just rescently that I explored painting with acrylics, and more rescently that I explored portraiture. 

I copied, tried to copy this portrait from Agnes Cecile's paintings, a great watercolor artist which makes traditional abstract portraits. I was happy with this one until I try painting the lips. I had always had problems when painting the lips and this one is no exception. Almost heaven. -.-

This is my first ever attempt at portaiture. Before I started, I consulted a lot of youtube tutorials first, tried out some of its methods. The method I use here is to block out first the shadows to help me figure out first the contours of the face. Then detemine the middle tone and then add the details along with the highlights.

My reference for this one is a pointilism portrait of Adam Sandler. I wanted to test out if I could paint a portrait if I only have a black and white reference. I don't if I really got it right though, but it kinda looks like him so I'm happy! :D

This one is another whole method. I toned out first my canvas with diluted maroon and then worked from there. First the shadows, then the middle tone, and then the highlights. The contrast looks very good. And I like how the red of the foreground bounces off to the skull. :D

This one was almost good. I finally got the technique, though not entirely, I used the method I use to paint the portrait of my niece, and maybe got something right this time cause the method didn't really gave me a hard time. But then it went sour when I painted the nose and lips. I wanted it to give a pinkish nose, and slightly reader lips just like in my reference but I think I kinda over do it. 

You ever get that feeling that it looks so easy but when you do finally do it yourself it's hard as hell? Well this is one of those things. Master make it looks so easy, but I know that with enough study and practice, maybe one day I can do it!