Carl's Portrait Finished!!

Okay, this could be a mammoth post - the portrait is finished, and there's been a lot of work done since the last post... so, here goes...

With the main part of the face almost complete, I start work on the hair, the beard, and the helmet Carl is wearing as part of his re-enactment costume.

The hair is built up much in the same way as the mustache; deliberate pencil strokes put down in the direction of the strands of hair themselves. All the time I'm adding pencil marks, I bear in mind where the light is hitting the hair and make sure to lighten the pencil strokes in this area.

You'll also note I have a sheet of paper that lays on top of the drawing - this is to stop my hand smudging the pencil that's already down on the paper as I work on the other side of face. Carl's hair is dark, and as this part is on the opposite side to the intense sunlight, it will be the largest dark part of the image. To make sure I don't go too dark, I start work on the metal helmet he's wearing. By working round the whole image like this I can make sure that one part doesn't become too dominant in the balance between light and dark, thus keeping the focus on the main part of the face.

I mentioned in the last post about using a Q-tip or cotton swab for blending the pencil to create a softness, and I use this method quite heavily in the creation of the helmet. I need to ensure the helmet has a different textural look than to the face and hair. The metal, although dented and scuffed a little, is still smooth and somewhat reflective, so I carefully blend the pencil and add detail to create the smooth but worn look of the metal.

With the metal helmet pretty much done I go back to the hair. Finding the balance on both sides of the face is very important; by that I mean the overall composition of the portrait. The composition is the placing of the dark and light elements around the image. If one side of the drawing is too dark or too light that it makes your gaze go to just that part, then the drawing has failed. I need to make your eyes move fluidly around the drawing, seeing the focal point first and then comfortably moving around the detail, taking in the whole image, until you are drawn back to the focal point.

The left side of the drawing is pretty easy to work on; there's no direct sunlight on the hair, so I just need to capture the texture of the hair, but it's a totally different story on the other side of the face...

...the sun is highlighting the hairs on Carl's beard. There's two ways I can deal with this. One is to create the beard and then lift off the pencil marks to create the highlights with a putty rubber. But the detail is too small for the putty rubber and it lifts off too much of the surrounding pencil. The other way is to keep the paper white in the areas of the individual hairs. Again, the detail is small, so I carefully put down the marks for the beard whilst trying not to block out the white paper where I want the sunlit hairs to be. This takes time, patience and a very steady hand!

But bit by bit the beard is created, and after stepping back several times to take an appraisal of the drawing, I reach the point where the portrait is finished...

It's a successful portrait. It looks like him, I've illustrated the sunlight on his face, I've created realistic detail in the skin, hair and metal of the helmet, and I've retained the focal point whilst still creating areas of interest around the whole face and I don't think it needs anymore work. I think Carl will be happy with it too.