portrait of a man in graphite pencil

I just finished this portrait. It is a gift for the birthday of my teacher, it is a portrait of her husband.
Very difficult to take good pictures of such a drawing. The paper is really white, a bit blueish I think. I always have to alter the photos and I always am not satisfied about the result. Of course every screen of a computer, laptop and such is different and therefor pictures are darker or lighter than at my screens.
It seems that my screens are a bit light in comparison to the ones of others.
So I place 2 pictures, in different ways altered.
Of course I like the original the most but once I gave the portrait away I only have the photo to look at. That's why I want good photos of my work.
The top one is softer, the bottom one is clearer but a bit harsh and a bit too much contrast. I do not know which one I find the best in comparison to the original drawing.

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OILPAINTING old woman portrait black and white

A while ago I finished this portrait of an old woman. I found the photo on the internet.
The woman is suffering from Alzheimer and I was struck by her eyes.
You can see her confusion, not understanding.
I try to catch her expression with painting her in black and white. Her world is I think without colour, without details.
I hope you feel the same as I do.
This portrait is 20x15cm and painted on an MDF panel.
It took many many hours and I love to paint all those creases and folds of het skin.
A real challenge and I learned a lot.

cyclamen leaves, excercise watercolour

For my online course Botanical Art with Leonie Norton I choose the Cyclamen for my masterdrawing and painting.
My next assignment is therefor to paint two leaves of the Cyclamen, front and back.

I do not have much experience with watercolor and I am really struggling. But slowly I think I am getting somewhere and I discover what kind of technique(s) I like.

I took some photos of the leaves, not yet finished but I do not know at the moment how to proceed. So I put them away, practise a bit more and look at them again after a while to see if I can make them better and of course how to do that. It is a bit difficult because at the moment there are no cyclamen available so I only have my notes and drawings to work from.
To see if I painted the right tones I altered the painting in black and white with the help of Paint Shop Pro.

The second two photos are altered, I made the paintings darker with the help of Paint Shop Pro so I could  see what they would look like if I add more darker layers of paint. Again I changed the colours into black and white to see the tones.

charcoal drawing dog

I just finished this drawing for the course of Val Webb: a drawing with charcoal in black and white. And I could not help myself to put some colour into the eyes.
In real the fur is a bit softer, not so white, more greyish