As with the other portraits I start with a pencil outline. This is done on a sheet of A3 cartridge paper with a mechanical pencil which has an HB 0.5 lead.
Once the pencil outline is correct I switch to a Bic Biro pen, this one has black ink. This is quite scary, as there's no room for error when drawing with ink; unlike pencil I can't erase the mistakes. But I draw with a Biro pen everyday in my sketchbooks when I'm sculpting and I'm actually a little more comfortable with it than with a pencil. So here goes!
I always start with the eyes and I start with the darkest part of the eye, the pupil, and work outwards from there. One side of the face is in sunlight (notice the line down the nose denoting the change from light to shadow) and the eyes are squinting from both the sun and smiling, so there's not much light getting into the eyes. So the eyes are quite dark and they'll be part of the darkest areas of the whole portrait. The shadows in the nostrils are also just as dark, so I put those in too, to help me balance out the dark areas.
I start shading in the side of the face that is naturally in shadow so that I can build up the gradual layers of tone to create the three-dimensional effect. I don't tend to work in just one area and move outwards; I tend to hop around from area to area, building them up systematically as I go. This works for me, but it's just personal choice.
As I hop around the drawing I try and link the areas as quickly as possible, so that one section doesn't get overworked, making the whole picture too dark. It also helps me keep the features in proportion to each other by stepping back and checking it regularly and that helps to prevent any distortion by concentrating too much on one spot.
It's the same process as creating Carl's portrait in the previous blog post, but the effect can be a lot bolder and I think it'll work well with the black plastic of the crash helmet. We'll see!
