29 Faces for February

My Derwent Artbars are here!!!!!  Yaaaaaayyyyyy....

So, I've been playing like it's Christmas morning, doing two (invented) faces.  Made one very, VERY stupid mistake: I grabbed one of my sketchbooks to put the first face on.  WHAT WAS I THINKING???  Of course, the paper was entirely UN-suited for use with water!  The preliminary sketch wasn't half bad, IMO....  By the way, the papers are white, both faces.  Weird things with my camera, plus shadows... page looks darker than it is.  OK, well, he's a Dark Elf, isn't he? 

 So, after the first application of water (yes, there were several!) I cut the page out of the sketchbook so the rest of the pages wouldn't get too messed up.  Ummm, Lesson #2: Wait until paper is dry before cutting with a knife.  Seriously.  The knife wasn't all that sharp, but I figured scoring twice would be enough to pull the paper off.  Never pull on wet paper....  Also, without being stretched on a board, the (wrong!) paper wrinkled even worse!  
Here he is, Mr. Wrinkles, much of the way through his transformation.

On the face of it, I first thought, "Ewwww... wrinkled paper!  TORN paper!"  But he is kinda hot (I know, dirty old lady here...)  so I continued.  Also, I started another piece on proper watercolor paper.  Not great stuff, but decent.  I stayed with the same palette, for the most part, for both faces. 

Here he is, finished, and the young lady I made up, below him.  I think I'll forgo an older, face photo today. These seem to need to stand on their own, or fail on their own. 

I think the male is a qualified failure, or a qualified success.  The primary flaw is of course, the selection of the wrong kind of paper, though there are others.   The big success with him is that I am now getting intrigued by the idea of a Dark Elf sort of series.  Could be black and white sketches, paintings, or sculpts -- it's grabbing me, WATCH OUT!!!