March 2013
I initially spent two hours working on this before deciding to double-check the placement of the facial features to see how accurate I was. As it turns out, I wasn’t. So I started over (never be afraid to do that!) and drew a light rectangle that mapped the measurements of the face from the original photograph to my paper. The first drawing here shows the initial sketch of the major features layered on that rectangle.
The second drawing begins to show a bit more detail, and the third adds some cross hatching to define form.
Between the third and fourth drawing I blended the cross hatching to create a wash effect, then began to add black conte for the darkest areas. I almost stopped here, actually, since I like the effect of this partially finished drawing. I even used it on my business card!
The remaining drawings show the addition of more conte, including white for the hair highlights and a very subtle blue for the eyes, and freckles!
Definitely the hardest part of this one was the mouth. For this particular young woman, her slight smirk is key to recognizing who she is. At every point in the process, I tried to capture that subtlety, without success. But, I do like the portrait now that it’s done. Just more and more practice…
Any guesses who this is?
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