I started by measuring and outlining the features. This stage takes probably the longest because if the features are not accurate the portrait will bear little resemblance. I sketched the lines lightly with a mechanical pencil with a 0.5mm lead on a medium surface drawing paper. I used a kneadable eraser to sketch and re-sketch the features until they were right. The thing I always struggle with is the mouth, particularly when someone is smiling, I always have trouble getting the size right, but he has a broad smile and it looks right.
Then I start figuring out the darkest areas and gently start applying a 2B pencil, working up several of the areas at once, mainly to re-affirm the plan in my own mind.
Whether I'm sculpting or drawing I almost always concentrate on the eyes first because, for me, if I can't get them right the whole piece falls apart. The light in the eyes on the photo is central and flat so I use a little license to try and give the eyes more life. He has grey/blue eyes that are quite dark, so I use a 2B and a HB pencil combined to create the eye, leaving the paper white for the light on the pupil and lifting off some of the pencil for the light on the iris. At this stage, by working up just the eyes they start to look a little large for the face but that's just because the focus is purely on them. Taking the time early on to properly measure the face helps counteract any tendency to alter features later when they appear out of proportion.
Laying a sheet of plain paper over the pencil so that I don't smudge it, I start working up the area around the eyes applying shading with a combination of the pencils and pushing it around with the tip of a cotton bud to soften it. I radiate the shading outwards from the eyes, slowly filling in the details of the head, all the time thinking about the light and dark values, so that hopefully the eyes will remain the focal point. I can go back and add more pencil to them to darken them but I don't want to overwork them and make them flat.
I find the facial hair really tricky to do, to get it to look like hair and not just pencil lines and to incorporate form with shading without smudging the detail of the hair too much. Phew! Because the hair is reddish it's sometimes tricky to see the light and dark values if the photo is in colour, so if I have the image in a digital format I'll use software to change it into a black and white photo which helps.
I decide to fill in the facial hair and will then go back over it to add the shading to create the form of the face and add highlights and detail to show the hair. It's a process of slowly building a little at a time and lifting off with the eraser to catch the light on the face.
It's not finished yet but I'm leaving it there for today. I'll come back to it tomorrow and hopefully will have decided whether to leave the shirt as just sketch lines or work that more into the drawing.....
