Portrait finished

My first response is, wow! On the surface, I really like it and think it's pretty good for a beginner (well, except for the hair, I have not a clue how to do hair!). I give myself good marks!

BUT ...

There's a lot of problems with it, all of which point to my lack of basic skills which I never bothered to learn. Let's look!

Ok the hair sucks, whatever, I've never done a portrait before, no idea how to do hair, I'll learn.

Anatomy: it's off. The ear is wrong, the pupils aren't centered, the bottom of the nose is a mess (which is why it's cut here) the forehead is quite problematic ( though better than it was; he had a Klingon one for a while).

Value and Color: the real problem. Check back at the reference photo; the left side of the portrait is ok, but the right side is waaaaaay off, he's not in that much shadow and the color is made up in my head I guess, and badly at that. I made it way too dark. The color is off and my pencil technique is without direction.

So. Yay! it's a really good starting point, gauge, what have you. Yay! I can draw.

I HAVE GOT TO LEARN MY BASICS, how many times do I need to repeat that? Just because I can draw doesn't mean I can do it well. Learn something!

So I'm gonna. I've signed up for an online course about shading and values, which I'll start in the next couple of days. Plus I found this free online comp,eye drawing course, with critiques! that I'm also going to focus on soon.

So I'm putting away the color for the time being, and starting at the bottom.

I'll have more stuff, plus details on the courses, up here soon!

Mas Frutas

Cherries! I got bored and didn't finish the stem or leaves. I burnished the hell out of these cherries, with both the colorless blender and the white pencil. I almost certainly overdid it, but am fairly pleased. It doesn't look like colored pencil much. The uppermost cherry is quite off in shading, but the other two are alright. The highlights on the bottom of the middle cherry, also way off because I don't really have the right technique down. All in all, is ok.

Baby steps

So now I've gone and read three or five books on colored pencil, and I'm ready to start laying the rubber on the road. I thought colored pencils were pretty simple; they're not. So I've got quite a few things to learn. I'm working on the drawing of Tom from the previous post, meanwhile it's time to actually go!

So here's two drawings of a mango, from a reference photo. Neither one is anything much, but this was a good go. The second one's better than the first, though the use of green got out of control somehow. This second one featured a lot of burnishing with the white pencil.

Balls be rolling

Ok I'm finally getting my artistic shit together, I think. In any case, I've been doing some drawing and I guess that's the same thing. My latest bit started on a flight and I got my line art on a bit . . .



then I got home and drew some more until I decided I'd better stop ....



I've tried to pay WAY more attention to value, and whilst I know I have room for improvement I do believe I'm making some progress.

I've been really flirting with color lately and am quite intrigued, yet I'm finding just a little . . . overwhelmed? with pastels, it just seems like maybe it's too much? probably just because I'm trying to learn drawing AND value AND color AND the medium of pastels AND other things too, I can't seem to get out of the gate. So I've started to fiddle a bit with colored pencils.



I read somewhere that, like pastels, it's a lot about the layering of colors. I decided, with middling success, to get black by repeated layering of blues and reds. This is my beginning shot. I think perhaps I've erred by using paper that's too smooth; I'm gonna have a hard time getting all my layers in. No matter; I'm discovering I really like these color pencils and I'm barely intimidated by them. I've gotta do it on the right type of paper though.

But first, let me repeat my mistakes for a while! I've taken this cool reference photo (well, HE took it, but):



and made this sketch from it:


and it's good! and I'm happy but I already know I can sketch and this part is easy, it's the NEXT part -- the value color shading thing -- that I get tripped up on but I'm REALLY trying to just go with it and see what happens so I just start coloring it on in ...


... and it's fun and looks good so far! It's a rainy day today and we'll see what kind of progress I make. I've AGAIN started on too-smooth paper, so I have limitations. This is probably to my benefit.

Sketchy

We've spent the past few days at Chaco Canyon, probable cultural center of the ancient "Anasazi" peoples and site of ruins upon ruins upon ruins. Beautiful spot. In an effort to get things moving, a did a series of really quick (10 minutes or so) sketches during a tour we took.

Here's the general look of the ruins ...





and my sketches thereof ...








Then I started drawing people walking around the tour with us.










Ultimately I am happy with these sketches; I've never really drawn people before and am pleased with how these efforts turned out. I've also never really done quicky-type sketches before and liked it!