Self-Portrait Finished

This is pretty much where I left off in the last post - gently building up the tonal areas to create the effect of bright sunlight on the face...

I'm using a black Bic Biro pen for this portrait, and it can work much in the same way as a pencil: you can alter the darkness of the pen lines by applying a range of pressures to the pen as you draw and you can build up subtle shading by using layers of cross-hatched lines. It's this technique I'm using to create the effect of solid form, both in the face and the crash helmet.

With the slight hint of the right side of the face drawn in so that the face looks washed with light , I move on to the hair. The hair is blonde and in the sunlight this makes it look white, so I need to use the whiteness of the paper to get the lightest possible effect.

To do this I pencil in the white lines for the hair and then work around these pencil lines gently with the pen to build up the dark behind them. When I've got the effect I want I rub out the pencil lines and the whiteness of the hair stands out. This is also helped by framing the face with the black of the helmet.

The fabric of the liner of the helmet is created using the same technique as that used to create the face; gently applied lines of pen one on top of the other as well as applying extra pressure in the ares of shadow. On the other side of the helmet the shadow is more intense.

The trick now is to make the rest of the drawing look like different materials to the face, by that I mean the plastic visor, the fabric of the liner, the hard, dark plastic of the crash helmet, all with the same pen. To do this I pay real attention to the lines of reflection on the plastic as well as how the light is absorbed to a certain extent by the other plastic around the helmet.

Although the original sketch shows the whole of the crash helmet, as I work through the drawing I realize to illustrate the whole crash helmet would overpower the portrait, so I make the decision to show just the nearest outline to the face, to frame the face and keep the face as the focal point.

And that's it, the finished portrait, a true likeness using just a Biro pen for the whole drawing, combining my two passions; art and motorcycles!

Self Portrait

It's about time I did a self-portrait, but rather than the usual style I've decided to do mine also portraying my other passion in life - motorcycling. So I'm doing a portrait of me in my crash helmet!

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.

I'm using a cross-hatching technique, much in the same way as a pencil. I can apply a range of pressures to the pen from a light to heavy line as I put it onto the paper and this can create the same tonal effect as a pencil. With practice it's quite easily to shade with a Biro pen, but it needs confidence as one mistake can ruin the whole sketch!

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!

Quick Character Sketch

Just a couple of quick sketches today. I thought I'd revisit one of the character heads I've sketched in the past for a sculpture. As I've mentioned before I had a habit of merely sketching the heads from only one angle - face on - and filling in the blanks with my imagination as I sculpted the character in 3D. So today I decided to quickly sketch the head from four different angles.

So I start with the outline of the basic head shape, measure out where the facial features sit, remember to put the eyes halfway on the face, although the eyes are disproportionally large; this is intentional.

I sketch the lines across the paper so that the next sketch lines up with the first and the measurements remain consistent. This time I sketch the head at a slightly turned angle.

I had a tendency to misalign the features when the head is slightly turned but the practice is paying off, I only have to re-draw the mouth, everything else gets put in the right place first time!

Again sketching the measuring lines across the page I sketch the head from the side this time. This angle is an easy one. I won't sketch it from the other side because the hair pretty much blocks out the face.

The back is slightly trickier because I'm trying to show more structure and form in the hair, but I don't think I've represented it accurately.

 

So that's the quick character sketch from four angles.