Quick Face Sketch.

Have you ever had iritis? I hope not 'cos it's a painful inflammation of the iris and boy, it's no fun! The last few weeks have been a bit of a challenge to both rest my eyes and stay on top of my workload. Something had to take a back seat so I haven't been sketching for a while. But my eyes are well on the mend, so I picked a pencil back up for a quick little sketch...

I took some photos of a guy I met recently and will be working on a portrait of him very soon, but I wanted to take a better look at the images I've got and have a closer look at the face. Drawing from observation is a skill that needs practice; taking time to really look at the lines, shapes, and details of the face instead of glancing and working from whatever made it into your memory. Really looking and studying the face is like exercising a muscle, it takes effort and discipline, but the rewards are a much better drawing, so it's worth it!

At this stage I'm making a loose sketch of the shadows that define the form of the face, and checking whether I'm capturing the correct shape and proportion of the face. I'm using a mechanical pencil on a cheap cartridge paper, this will not be part of the portrait, and as it's just a practice sketch I'm not using my best paper.

I can see by this stage, that although the face in itself looks fairly realistic and believable, it's not an accurate representation of the guy. I've made the nose too small, I think you can see the original line almost ghosting the nose, but I let myself be tricked into thinking it would look too big. As I said, drawing from observation is a skill that needs to be practiced!
Enough for today, gonna give my eyes a break and work again tomorrow.