After my friend Richard saw a watercolor self-portrait I did a few weeks ago, he asked me to do his portrait and sent me some photographs to work from. He probably expected a watercolor, but this is the result, done using Procreate on my iPad. There's a lot more smoothing in this picture than I'm used to doing, but I felt it was necessary for a portrait. I like the result, but feel like I'm in transition regarding what technique to use.
Halfway through working on the picture, I watched some online videos by a west coast artist, Shaddy Safadi, that got me thinking about the set of brushes I was using, among other things. Even though he was talking about Photoshop, his videos helped me get a better understanding of Procreate's brushes, and I made a few of my own by imitating his brush set. The new brushes in turn helped me with smoothing and edges. It's great that there are people on the Web who are so generous with their knowledge and experience.
Ken Crocker Artist 