Carl's Portrait.

Started work on a portrait of Carl - a lovely guy who does re-enactment, and as it's such a big part of his life it seems only fitting his portrait should reflect his passion, so I'm sketching him in costume.

It starts with a rough outline to get the size of the head and the features in the right place.

With the outline done, as always, I start with the eyes. I'm drawing on a flat white cartridge paper, there's no texture to the paper, and I'm using a mechanical pencil with a HB lead.

The reference image I'm using for the portrait was taken in bright sunshine, and Carl's smiling, so the light and his facial expression makes his eyes seem smaller than if his face was relaxed and in softer light. This bright lighting is going to be a challenge!

Even with the eyes smaller I still need to capture the intensity in his facial expression, so I start right in the middle of the eye. The pupil is going to be the darkest part, but it needs a spot of reflection, a highlight, otherwise the eyes will look flat.

With the darkest part down, I start building up the tonal detail around the eye. The nose guard of the helmet is casting a shadow over the other eye, and blocking out any highlights within the iris and pupil, so this is going to be tricky not to make the eye look flat and lifeless.

I'm using the pencil to make soft cross-hatching marks that blend into each other and I'm building up layers of darker pencil to suggest the 3-dimensional form of the eyes. As I work, I sketch on both eyes, building up each a little at a time so that the tonal qualities work together.

The bright sunlight is on the right side of the face as we're looking at it, and at this stage I'm think of leaving the paper completely white to show the brightness.

So I'm just slowly mapping the tonal changes on the face as it transitions from shade to sunlight. I'm not worried about the range of tonal depth, just mapping the shapes out loosely.

I'm not decided yet, but I'm thinking of making the details around the edge of the face a little out of focus, or more sketchy, so there's more emphasis on the main part of the face.

But it's early days yet, I still have an enormous amount of work to do, and the feel of the portrait may change as work progresses. It's certainly going to be a challenge though!

Carnival Portrait Finished.

There wasn't much work left to do on this drawing, but it was at a critical point where I could really mess it up. This is how it looked yesterday...

Using the medium black Bic biro pen I continued the gentle build up of layers of pen marks.

I use the word 'gentle' because if you press too hard with the pen you put down a very dark mark that you can't undo, and so everything else around it has to be that much darker for it to blend. In doing this you lose the ability to create the illusion of solid form; you can use darks and lights to suggest the three dimensional form of the eyeball and socket in the face.

So by gently building up layer on layer of lighter pen marks I can create the depth of darkness that I need to suggest the eye as it sits back in the socket, as well as making it look like there's make-up on his face.

Even at this stage, close to completion, I can still get it very wrong. To keep control of the sketch I step back after every few marks and look at it from a distance to check I'm not making one area too dark.

At this point I think I've finished. But after getting a cup of coffee and coming back to it, I realize the bottom of the eye, where the skin of the lower lid covering the eyeball bags a little, it looks too prominent and it's distracting my focus. So I add a few more pen marks to darken it up a little, blending them so the skin looks smooth and soft.

The difference is almost imperceptible, but put them side by side and hopefully you can see it.

It's always worth taking a little time out from a sketch and coming back to it, to see what doesn't quite work. But it's also good to know when to stop! I set out with a loose idea of a sketch, no definite plan, but knowing I wanted to create a face which looked like it had make-up on the skin. I'm happy with this one at this stage and it's a good practice run for a more developed sketch in the future.

Just a quick note: the images on the blog are yellowish in color - this isn't because I'm drawing on yellow paper, but because I'm often sketching in the evening under artificial lights and taking photos with my phone camera and uploading them with only a change to the brightness of the image. This is how the same image looks without the yellowing of artificial light...

Quite a difference! But keeping up with the blog and sketching every day will often mean slightly yellowish images as it's the quickest way to get the blog done!

Thanks for reading.

Carnival Portrait continued...

I'd been looking forward to getting back to this drawing, although I'll admit I'm a little nervous about sketching the make-up on the face in case I screw it up, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. So here goes!

I decide to define the eyebrow before adding in the shading for the make-up. Still using the medium black Bic biro pen I start gently adding the strokes of the hairs that create the eyebrow.

I follow the same directions as the hairs when making the marks with the pen, and the hairs go in different directions, overlaying each other, thicker in some places and sparse in others.

It's really just a case of patiently laying down lines to create the mass of hairs, but how you apply pressure really matters when making the marks with the pen - where the hair comes out of the skin needs to be lighter than the other end of the hair, so the pen stroke needs to reflect this.

This character's hair is very dark, and the eyebrow needs to be dark as well, so I continue layering the pen marks, still paying attention to the direction and thickness of the hairs.

Once I'm happy with that, I move back onto the shading around the eye, but not because I'm still trying to avoid the moment when I start the make-up! I need to plan how the make-up will sit on top of the skin and so I need to define the detail under the eye first. This is an older character, with lines and slight bags under his eyes so I lightly shade those in and then start adding the make-up.

As I add the make-up I follow the highlights and furrows of the skin.

Slowly, I work down the face, adding the carnival make-up detail, all the while checking the depth of shading on the overall face so that the drawing stays in balance. The shading around the eye needs more attention as I add the darker layer of the make-up, so as to not lose the form of the eyeball and socket.

Time has gotten away from me, and I'm not going to get this finished today, but I'm happy with the sketch so far. It doesn't seem like I've done much work when you compare it with yesterday but building the shading takes a lot longer than it seems.

It's looking good. Let's hope I don't mess it up tomorrow; you can't erase pen lines!

Picking Up Where I Left Off...

Time to resurrect this blog; work is crazily busy and so now it's more important than ever that I find time out each day to sketch for pleasure rather than just designing for work. It also helps that over the festive season I bought myself a gorgeous new drawing board and have been itching to get started with it!

The first sketch has no definite plan, I've just taken a reference image of an eye and sketched it roughly out using a mechanical pencil with a HB 0.5mm lead on Daler Rowney Cartridge paper which has a smooth surface.

 At this stage I'm not going to draw the whole face - this is really just a practice run, getting my hand back in, so I'm just focusing on a small part of the face and working on my control to build detail.

Once the image is roughly sketched in pencil I start using a different drawing tool, a black Bic medium biro pen.

 Most people just use these pens for writing but I love drawing with them. They can be used in a similar way to a pencil, creating soft shading and dramatic light and dark effects, but I have a habit of smudging pencil, and I find the pen work much cleaner.

So, in the same way I would if I was using a pencil, I start to define the dark areas of the eye.

My pencil lines provide a guide, once the pen mark is down on the paper there's no going back so the rough pencil sketch really helps at this stage.

The iris of the eye in the reference image is a pale color so I have to keep the pen marks in the iris to a minimum whilst still trying to make it look realistic, but when I reach a point where it looks okay I leave it and move on to the surrounding area of the eye. I can always come back to the iris later if it looks too pale but if I over-work it now the whole image will fail.

 As I said at the beginning I don't have a definite plan but I will be doing a series of carnival character portraits in the future, so I'm thinking of trying some carnival make-up on this image. I need to extend the image to allow for that, so I add in the nose.

I don't need to sketch the whole side of the nose in, because at this stage the light and the dark shadows are suggesting the form for me. With a tiny bit more shading on the nose, I return to work on the eyelid.

The eye needs a lot more work but I'm starting to think about how the carnival make-up will sit on the skin so I've sketched out a rough pattern and I'll work on that tomorrow.