The Process of a Portrait

A lot of the portraits that I've done are of friends who asked to have one done. I try with each new one to branch out a little into territory that I haven't covered. This gives me the opportunity to try new things and expand my skills and also gives the recipient a unique portrait.

When I started working on Carrie's, I wasn't really sure what direction I wanted to go, but I always start with the same basic "skeleton" file in Illustrator and move on from there. Carrie's portrait started out much like my other portraits, particularly Brad.

Not finding this particularly satisfying, I looked for ways to make this portrait more original. My first idea was to fill the blocks of color with patterns that I also created in Illustrator.

This is a technique I hope to apply to some project in the future, but it wasn't really working for this particular image. So my next idea was to use actual found photographic textures instead of drawn patterns. I searched through folders and folders of photos I've taken through the years on my hard drive to pull out patterns with which to test the technique in Photoshop.


Once I saw things come together with just test photos I decided this was the way to go. I grabbed my camera and stepped outside to take photos of any textures I could find.


The great thing about the outcome of this project is that in addition to learning new techniques, I've begun a library of textures and patterns that are now at my disposal for future projects.