Originally Posted by Cassirin

Oh, MJ, that looks amazing! Even with only three colors, it's so well done and fun to look at. I'm obsessed with his hair and his mouth and his eyes and the whole thing.

Originally Posted by kayquilz

um EXCUSE ME. *passes out*

that is all. You're killing me with the pure talent, MJ. I love the three colored sketch of Hero...it's just...like...cool. lol. *is bad at complimenting art clearly*

Originally Posted by Felixir

I just realised I never commented after seeing that Henry portrait so now HERE I AM to flail about both these last two

anyway. no offence but I am absolutely blown away by what you can do with coloured pencils (with every, if not most, mediums really, but my experience wresting with coloured pencils makes me all the more fgkhskh when I see your pieces). That Henry piece is incredible, from the lighting on his skin to the beardy hair to the eXpReSSioN??? and the shading of everything I am in AWE. once again.

and look at Hero ;-; this piece is amazing, and I really like the framing too. I can't even begin to guess at how you got to something like this with three colours also I'm retconning the universe so u can be my art teacher ok good talk. was the reference you used in its original colours, or did you change it up or maybe make it greyscale? (would that even help? idk)

ugh thank you so much for sharing your art. I am for real not kidding around when I say I aspire to reach your level with portraiture and this medium and yEAH.


can I ask, when you do portraits, which is part tends to be the biggest hurdle? and also, do you have many difficulties reaching (or losing and refinding) a likeness, and if so, how do you go about drawing (ha) it out, or back out? cause you always absolutely nail the likeness and so I am the curious. I hope that makes sense, if it doesn't feel free to throw things at me or wax lyrical about anything vaguely related cause I'll drink it in none the less

also not to bombard you with questions or anything but do you ever do portraits on white paper, or do you prefer to stick to tan?

Aww, thank you so, so much. Compliments and even just comments in general on my art truly mean the world to me. If you can't tell, colored pencils are pretty much my favorite and I'm always so pleased when people enjoy the work I do with them.

And I'd have been so happy to be your art teacher The reference was already in black and white, though I did crop it to look that way - I enjoyed that framing too, so thank you. But I did recommend to my students that they should convert their reference photos to greyscale so they could solely focus on values. I think that makes it a little easier when working with different colors.

I don't mind questions at all! Tbh I think the most difficult part for me is my motivation and attention span. I get really excited about ideas for art that I want to immediately work on it, which is great and all. But without fail, while I am still working on whatever, I have several more ideas that I end up getting excited about those instead and a lot of times I end up putting what I started on aside to do something else. And a big part of my job is coming up with creative projects and their examples, which I also get excited about, so I have a million and one different things I'm trying to work on.... and end up with a lot of unfinished projects. Countless, really. Most things I end up not finishing because I either NEED to work on something else because of work or I WANT to work on something else because I have an idea or new technique or medium I just want to work with. And a lot of what I do - especially colored pencils - just inherently take a long time, so it's a vicious cycle. Then add on top of the fact that I tend to multi-task my entire life and cannot focus on one thing for more than like 15 minutes at a time anyway. So I need to work hard to force myself to finish things sometimes, but even if I don't finish something, I'm still learning and enjoying the process.

I have a feeling you were asking more about technical things though lol, so on that side of things, with colored pencil, it's sometimes finding that right color combination of layering and blending that can be difficult. And I have to be pretty confident with the drawing by the time I'm layering in the color, because once you get to the waxy layer of colored pencil, there is no erasing. There have been plenty of times that I felt the need to erase at that point, and I need to find a way to "fix" it or work around it.

I do sometimes still struggle with certain things, especially noses. But I've been working with portraits for a while that I usually can get everything about where it needs to be, though it does take me a little bit of working back and forth, revising here and there to make sure everything is in proportion and have the proper relationship between each feature, measuring those objects against each other. But I do work in graphite first (for pretty much every medium I work in), and my lines are always really light and very sketchy so I can continually erase and refine, until I'm happy with everything.

Yeah, most of my art is on white paper and most of my sketchbooks are white. That three color one of Hero is on white actually, but I see that the lighting might make it look a little toned. I actually just got into working with toned tan a few years ago after I saw how much colored pencil pops on it, and that's the only medium I've used on it so far. Toned grey is also really nice for charcoal, because you already have the mid tones using the paper, and it gives the dark charcoal a nice contrast. And feel free to ask me as many questions as you'd like. Sorry for the wall of text!

Originally Posted by Waddles

Your talent is blowing me away. The portraits are so realistic looking. You're too cool