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Saturday, May 31, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Self-Portrait Finished
This is pretty much where I left off in the last post - gently building up the tonal areas to create the effect of bright sunlight on the face...
I'm using a black Bic Biro pen for this portrait, and it can work much in the same way as a pencil: you can alter the darkness of the pen lines by applying a range of pressures to the pen as you draw and you can build up subtle shading by using layers of cross-hatched lines. It's this technique I'm using to create the effect of solid form, both in the face and the crash helmet.
With the slight hint of the right side of the face drawn in so that the face looks washed with light , I move on to the hair. The hair is blonde and in the sunlight this makes it look white, so I need to use the whiteness of the paper to get the lightest possible effect.
To do this I pencil in the white lines for the hair and then work around these pencil lines gently with the pen to build up the dark behind them. When I've got the effect I want I rub out the pencil lines and the whiteness of the hair stands out. This is also helped by framing the face with the black of the helmet.
The fabric of the liner of the helmet is created using the same technique as that used to create the face; gently applied lines of pen one on top of the other as well as applying extra pressure in the ares of shadow. On the other side of the helmet the shadow is more intense.
The trick now is to make the rest of the drawing look like different materials to the face, by that I mean the plastic visor, the fabric of the liner, the hard, dark plastic of the crash helmet, all with the same pen. To do this I pay real attention to the lines of reflection on the plastic as well as how the light is absorbed to a certain extent by the other plastic around the helmet.
Although the original sketch shows the whole of the crash helmet, as I work through the drawing I realize to illustrate the whole crash helmet would overpower the portrait, so I make the decision to show just the nearest outline to the face, to frame the face and keep the face as the focal point.
And that's it, the finished portrait, a true likeness using just a Biro pen for the whole drawing, combining my two passions; art and motorcycles!
I'm using a black Bic Biro pen for this portrait, and it can work much in the same way as a pencil: you can alter the darkness of the pen lines by applying a range of pressures to the pen as you draw and you can build up subtle shading by using layers of cross-hatched lines. It's this technique I'm using to create the effect of solid form, both in the face and the crash helmet.
With the slight hint of the right side of the face drawn in so that the face looks washed with light , I move on to the hair. The hair is blonde and in the sunlight this makes it look white, so I need to use the whiteness of the paper to get the lightest possible effect.
To do this I pencil in the white lines for the hair and then work around these pencil lines gently with the pen to build up the dark behind them. When I've got the effect I want I rub out the pencil lines and the whiteness of the hair stands out. This is also helped by framing the face with the black of the helmet.
The fabric of the liner of the helmet is created using the same technique as that used to create the face; gently applied lines of pen one on top of the other as well as applying extra pressure in the ares of shadow. On the other side of the helmet the shadow is more intense.
The trick now is to make the rest of the drawing look like different materials to the face, by that I mean the plastic visor, the fabric of the liner, the hard, dark plastic of the crash helmet, all with the same pen. To do this I pay real attention to the lines of reflection on the plastic as well as how the light is absorbed to a certain extent by the other plastic around the helmet.
Although the original sketch shows the whole of the crash helmet, as I work through the drawing I realize to illustrate the whole crash helmet would overpower the portrait, so I make the decision to show just the nearest outline to the face, to frame the face and keep the face as the focal point.
And that's it, the finished portrait, a true likeness using just a Biro pen for the whole drawing, combining my two passions; art and motorcycles!
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