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.
