Hey, this is my first art post. I've done these portraits in gouache recently and I feel I can't improve anymore on my own. I need your help. I'm decent at drawing and I think I got a good hand with values, so my pencil drawings come out pretty ok, atleast in my eyes. My paintings on the other hand I'm not happy with at all. I always manage to mess something up, and I don't feel I learn anything from my mistakes, I just keep repeating them over and over. So I'd very much like some critiques from you guys and some pointers on what I can do to better myself. Below you'll find three portraits in gouache and three pencil renderings (two unfinished).

Portrait of a friend done from photo ref. The colors where different in the photo.


Selfportrait. Did the pencils in front of the mirror and did the colors from memory. I'm not actually that buff and I got less chiseled features. In my opinion I rendered the skin pretty well in this image, atleast I think it's the best of the three. Although the background I do not like at all.


Portrait of a friend done from life. I did the pencils from life and got damn good likeness, better then I've ever achieved before while drawing from life. But the colors are done from memory, and while painting I totally screwed up the likeness and now I wouldn't even be able to guess who it's supposed to be if I hadn't painted it myself. Also I messed up rendering the skin (and wasn't motivated to do the hair). This is IMO my worst painting yet, and my most recent...


The rest are pencil drawings done from photo. Two unfinished anatomy studies and one portrait of Jimi Hendrix.





So. What I'm looking for crits on is mainly my painting technique and my use of color. It seems I can't handle gouache properly and I'd like to learn how. My biggest problem (in my eyes) is I'm too eager to get color down, meaning I paint new color on areas that aren't already drie. What happens when I do this is I pick up color from the paper instead of putting it down, resulting in some pretty strange value and hue variations that don't really help the painting... Also I find it very hard to render a smooth surface, my brushstrokes are way to visible. Could I get a bigger brush to help this problem? Right now I'm using size 6 and size 3 round brushes for all my paintings.

Any crits you have are most welcome. Wether it's for my paintings or my drawings. Thanks.