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“I see no changes. Wake up in the morning and I ask myself,
“Is life worth living? Should I blast myself?”
I’m tired of bein’ poor and even worse I’m black.
My stomach hurts, so I’m lookin’ for a purse to snatch.”

 

I always wanted to make a portrait of him, his music is inspiring, it has the substance that every piece should have.

 

The hardest thing to do was make it look alike, and first I had to find a reference photo, unfortunately, Pac has very few good quality photographs, and those that are, are overused.

 

This portrait made it for me, in the way his eyes look, the have his very essence but is not the typical Thug Life look he’s always portrayed with.

 

The real struggle begins with the details, since this image is extremely jagged by compression most of the eye detail had to be artistically recreated, and to be fair, that’s a real hard task on itself.

 

 

The color palette was a big deal to me, I have never painted dark skin in watercolors, so my usual palette would be of any help, however I always liked blue hues on the skin tones, so I decided to go in that direction.

Added to the toned down Ultramarine Blue there’s Earth tones of Burnt Umber

 

Once I was finished with the watercolors I went ahead with Prismacolor Pencils, This allowed me to further add detail and color tonalities in the small and big spaces respectively.

I’m not an expert on prismacolors, in fact, I find them really difficult to work with and get smooth blends, but in this case the paper and pencils pick a great texture that I really like.

Hope You guys find this useful, I got caught up in the process of painting that I forgot to take progress pictures, but I promise I’ll do so, in the future!

 

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