Jean-Claude Van Damme Portrait

This was a piece done back in school. I was working on technique taught by Alex Bostic. It involved putting Gesso down in a slightly heavy fashion. Allowing brush strokes to be seen. You would then do your under drawing. The next step would be to seal your pencil drawing with matte medium and then glaze a almost opaque wash of Gouache over the drawing. The objective was to use a darker color that would ultimately serve as your shadow color. The next part was the most fun. You would just use your brush, sponge or paper towel with just plain water and pick out the highlights. Sort of like erasing the paint. The final parts would be adding color using color pencil and airbrush. It gave a really unique effect and I was totally into it for everything after I learned it. I have included a close up to show how the surface took the color pencil and the effect it gave everything.