 And we are going to explore the portrait today using warm and cool colors. So you'll see on the table here I have some piles. What I have done is I've taken magazines that folks were no longer interested in. No one in my house was reading them any longer and I've cut them up. So I have a pile of warm colors, yellows, reds, oranges and I have a pile of cool colors, greens and blues and purples. I've also made a pile of darks. So some blues, some browns, deep greens, some deep shadow colors. And we're going to use these to build our portraits. I'm going to use myself as a model, which is a really easy thing to do. So I would encourage you to do as many self-portraits as possible because it's a great way to learn about the face, lights and darks and color. So I'm sitting here in front of a mirror. You can too. If you have a bathroom mirror you want to sit in front of or if you have a hand mirror like this one that you can prop up maybe on a pile of books. Even a makeup mirror will work. The trick is though you just want to you want to prop it up on something so that you don't have to continually hold it. You want it to stay in a stable spot. So duct tape, using a scarf to tie it to something might work. The other tools that I have here, we're going to want a light on ourselves. I have an example here of a clamp light that I use every once in a while. This is kind of handy. You can put it on to any structure that's around you. But you can also use a lamp. If you have a bedside lamp that you can sit beside or if you have a clamp light that you might use as a spotlight for working in a garage, something like that would work too. Even a flashlight if you can strap a flashlight on to something. As far as paper goes, you can work on just regular eight and a half by eleven copy paper if you like. If you have that handy, this is sketchbook paper, nine by twelve sketchbook paper, just drawing paper. Really if you, anything will work, file folders, paper bags, anything that's handy. So the way we're going to get started is just with some observation. So I'm going to look at myself here in the mirror and I'm going to, I'm going to, one of my favorite views when I'm thinking about drawing myself is to put myself at a little bit of a, what I call a three-quarter angle. So this, for example, is head on. The center line of my face goes right up and down the middle. But if I turn my head just a little bit, this is a three-quarter angle. So now when I look in the mirror, I can see mostly this side of my face, but the other side of my face is peeking around from the back, which is, is kind of cool. I like that. And from this angle, I'm seeing that most of the light is hitting this side of my face. If I turn this way, then the reverse is true. So I'm going to actually use this vantage point and I'm going to start by looking at just the whole shape of my head, which I'm going to represent with a big oval on my paper. So my goal is, I just want to have a loose guideline to start collaging or building the form of my face using warm and cool colors. So that's the first thing I'm going to do. I'm just going to, I'm just going to sketch that out. So a big oval for my head, a cylinder for my neck, a rough line for where my shoulders are, and then the neat thing about the three-quarter view is that the centerline for your face is not down the center, but it's off to the side just a little bit. So I'm going to sketch the centerline in just to orient my features. I'm going to make a little bit of a proportion map here just to get me started. So the center of my face and then a horizontal center where my eyes are going to fall, the halfway down to my chin, another mark, another horizontal mark where my nose is going to fall, and then finally one more halfway mark about where my mouth will be. And then I'm going to look at the outer envelope or the silhouette and capture just the general shape of my hair because remember I'm not concerned with any detail at this point. I'm just giving myself a guideline for where I'm going to drop in the color that I see. I'm looking now at this line here just to give myself a little landmark for where the edge of my face is before I get started. Okay, so proportion map, general silhouette of the outline of my head, and the next thing I'm going to look for are the large patterns of light and dark because what we know about color is that cool colors, the greens, the blues, the purples, those go back in space, those recede like shadows. So what we'll do in just a moment is we're going to define all of the shadow areas that we see with those cool colors. The warm colors, we know that warm colors naturally come forward. So when we're talking about form, we can build form by putting the warmer colors in the lighter areas. So all of these spaces where light is hitting my face, I can start to think about putting the warmer colors. So to make that easier, I'm going to just outline them a little bit here. So I'll also continue to observe myself in the mirror as I work, but it's nice just to give myself a good starting point. So I know there's light in this triangular area. There's light on my nose on this side. I see light down here on my torso. And there's a nice big shape of light on my hair over here. And I'm also noticing that the darks, the darkest darks that I see are along the side of my face. I see some dark areas, shadows being cast on my eye sockets and on the far side of my face, my chin, and my neck. So I think I'm in a good place to get going. So you'll see on your screen that I have an example of what this project looks like after you've put some of your darks in. You want to always think about working dark to light. And the example that you see shows after putting in the darks, this is what your portrait will look like. So I'm going to demonstrate that here too. So what you'll notice is that these shapes are pretty random because when I cut them out of the magazine I was just aiming for the colors. And now I'm going to refine them just a little bit so they start to match what I see in the mirror and what I've sketched out on my paper. So I'm going to start with the darkest darks, which are on this side of my hair in particular. And I'm going to try and kind of make a match this line that I see of the edge of my face. So I'm just going to start to tear a little bit. I might even eyeball it with the scissors. Let's see how that's looking. Yeah, you know, that's not bad. I'm not aiming for perfection here. I just want to get something going that I can work with. And then we can refine it as we go on. Sort of a guideline that I like to use when I'm making any sort of artwork, but especially when I'm thinking about getting started is general to specific. So don't ask yourself for perfection or a lot of detail at the very beginning. That's just too stressful. Keep it nice and loose and general in the beginning and then enjoy building to the place where you feel like you have enough detail. And this is a great project to explore that. So right now I'm just looking for ways to put in big dark areas without worrying too much if they're exactly, exactly right. So I'm going to move over to this side too. And I see that I kind of have a curve or a C shape. And I'm going to rip this one so that it's just a little bit different, a little more organic, since it's kind of curly hair. Yeah, you know, that'll work. And I'm going to just sort of look through my pile of darks. There's some blues in here too, just to add some variety. I'm going to come down, always going back to the mirror to compare. I'm going to add a little bit of the texture that I see here at this point. Cut a little curve in there to sort of mimic a curl. You start to get, start to sort of see the idea. Just going to continue to build with your, with your darks until you get to the point where you feel like you can move on to your middle tones. So if you want to see what we're aiming for, go ahead and take a look at the example that I've brought in. You'll see it on your screen. And this shows how the portrait is starting to develop now that we're moving to our, our warmer tones. Okay. And I mentioned middle tones. So if you go back to the idea of thinking about observing your face in terms of lights and darks, not everything is a, is a strong highlight or a deep shadow. You've got a lot of space in there that's somewhere in between. And when you're thinking about color, those middle tones that make up most of what you see, you can find a color that will represent that in the warms that you picked out. So for example, I've got this color in my hand and this color in my hand. And I'm thinking that for what I see, if I'm thinking about color, when I look at my face, this will probably be the color that I use the most of. And then this could represent a little bit warmer color that would be the highest values or the lightest lights. So that's probably how I'm going to go forward. I'm going to go ahead and use shades like this. Maybe some of this. And then for my middles, my middle warm tones. And then when I get up to my highest highlights, I'm going to move into the yellows and the whites. The same with your darks. You can think about your very deepest darkest, darkest darks, maybe even going into this pile. Or you could look at your purples and your blues and your darkest darks would be your purples. And then your darks that are not quite as dark could move into your blues. So it's just a way of having fun with thinking about your lights and darks in terms of color. So thinking about your lightest lights as your very warmest colors and your darkest darks as your very deepest, coolest colors. And as you model those into your portrait, you'll start to come up with something that looks like this, right? So this is an example. After I've worked on this for a while, this is what I did at home because you can spend some time on this. You'll see that the highlights, I went with the yellow, like I'm talking about some highlights on my nose, on my nostrils. And then the strong bright red for the highlights on my hair. In the shadows, I've got almost like a brown black here for my coolest deepest shadows going all the way to greens and blues on this side. So this is a project that's really fun to sink into, put on some music, enjoy exploring your colors, placing them in different places, seeing how they look, trying different things. You might even try just to cut out three different shades or values of one color. So maybe you could do the whole thing in green, dark green, light green, and pale green. There's a lot of possibilities here. Experiment too with turning your head, you know, do a head on, do one three quarter views, maybe even experiment with looking at somebody else for a straight profile. The key is just to enjoy exploring and experimenting. And the more you observe and the more you play, the more confident you'll become. So have fun. And when you're outside, look around at the different colors that you see and think about when you're looking at a tree, for example, how many shades of green do you see? What are the shades that are in the light look like compared to the ones that are in the center of the tree and are darker? It's amazing what you'll discover. Have fun with it. Thank you.