Elizabeth Taylor / Cleopatra Portrait Study

So I watched Cleopatra last week with Elizabeth Taylor and really enjoyed it. The set design, costumes, everything was amazing, and it took them 10 years for the film to break even because it cost that much. Definitely worth it though, and I’ve really enjoyed drawing this, I may retire now 😅

I probably should’ve done a white wash under the gold just to make the metallic pop more but it was too late, oh well.

Stuff used;
Claire Fontaine Paint On Mix Media grey pad, A5.
Faber-Castell Polychromos colour pencils.
Staedtler Metallic Pens.

Colour Study

I’d been moving away from just doing portrait studies, and wanted to do some wider drawings too, and doing a scene in colour seemed nice, especially after enjoying the previous one in black and white. It didn’t quite come out how I wanted it, but there’s still limitations to drawing like this (mostly in pencil, with the skin base layer and roses done with my brush pens)

Monotone / Grey Pencils and Study

First study with the monotone/grey pencils on the grey paper. Would get slightly more range on white paper but there’s more warm and cool grey pencils available so I could always get a bigger range. I do like this paper though, and I’m looking forward to doing some colour pencils on it, as well as maybe ink and mixed media!

Pad is Paint On Mix Media Gris, by Claire Fontaine.

Pencils are Polycolor by KOH-I-NOOR Hardtmuth.

Photo from Pinterest of Lidia Savoderova

Monotone Portrait Study

Another one, not perfect but happy. I’m tempted to try and find monochrome white to black with grey pencils, so I have a little more range of tones to blend etc. As the lightest grey pen I have is great, but the one above that is a bit too dark so I’m struggling to get a full range of tones. Plus the darker tones in this pen set have a blue hue to them, no big deal but hopefully will be able to find something. I know I can get pastels in monochrome scale, but they’re a bit messy and won’t work with the other materials as well. I could do the odd one with paints as the base but it’s less practical. Might do a full colour one next