My Buddy's Dad Portrait

Gonna get a little more serious on you for a minute.  A good friends' Dad is having a rough go of it right now and I thought I would make him the subject my next portrait.  Truthfully, I don't know the guy, we've met, but never really talked.  I do know his daughter is a great friend to my wife and so I thought I'd give the painting to her when I'm done.
     I'm using plate bristol paper this time.  It's pretty much the polar opposite of the stuff I've been using.  Instead of a rough, grainy surface, it has a smooth almost shiny surface that allows the paint to sit on the surface a bit more instead of soaking in. This creates some really random and cool painterly effects.
     Since it worked so well on the last painting, I'm gluing this paper to a board also.  This time I'll take extra care to make sure the edges are glued down to prevent them from curling up like the last one did.    
     I thought I'd use watercolour pencils to layout the drawing since this paper will show the underlying pencil lines a bit more prominently than the rough paper I've used for the other 2 watercolours. 

     I've used a kind of scribbley style here. I'd say it's the pencil equivalent of scumbling in painting.  I spritzed the whole thing down with a water bottle to see how far I could get the paint to run on its own. Turns out, not that far. I'm going for a really minimalist approach with color and saturation.  I won't get heavier than a few light washes to give the portrait an airy quality. I'll just layer up watery paint and let the paint do what it's going to do.  My second grade teacher would probably scold me here because I'm not at all concerned about staying inside the lines.(She was a dirty B**** anyway, so I'm not too worried about it)  I layer in his facial features and the only place I want to get a detailed, saturated look is the eyes.  In my experience, if I leave the eyes a light, sweeping impression like the rest of the piece, its really easy for them to look dull and flat. So, to take special care I'll dab just a but of white gouche in for the reflections on the eyeballs and work in a gradient near the pupil to give a little more depth.

...with a few of my trademark splatters thrown in (literally) for fun.

Likes: I can't get enough of really watery watercolour. That's what I love about the medium, you just fill in color and it does what it wants.  Things like the left shoulder of his jacket or his wife in the background, the patterns, the way the mixed colors separate out a little as it dries.  The medium seems to breathe in its own way like nothing else I've used including any digital stuff.

Dislikes: Not a lot.  When I use the paint this way I feel a little more like a collaborator with the paint and it lifts some of the burden and pressure I put on myself to make it look just right.  I always want more life in my portraits than I can currently achieve but it's an ongoing goal.  I guess I would have liked to try harder to include more tones in the skin outside the crayola box skin tones I put together here.  That's it though!