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.

Doh!

Well I said I would post both the good and the bad attempts at sketching that I'm trying to produce on a daily basis. So today's efforts fall into the 'bad' category. And it was going so well!

 

So I picked back up on yesterday's sketch of the 'Skeleton Heads' with the intention of creating more solid forms using shading techniques. Things started off okay, although I'm not sure the reflections on the glasses are right.

Using a black Biro pen and putting down light, cross-hatching lines to build up a smooth, blended surface I went about trying to give the sketch 3D form so that the skull looks solid. Not as brilliant as I would like but not going too badly at this point.

So this is where things start to go wrong. Now I have to admit I was partly focused on the drawing and partly focused on researching something on the laptop whilst I was drawing, and I could make the excuse that that would account for my poor effort. But even though I'm obviously not great at combining two different tasks at once, the mistake in the drawing is really just down to my own stupidity; I should've known better given that I've studied this a million times before! Can you spot the mistake yet?

 

Yup, I've gone and drawn two different light sources in one sketch. Doh!

It took me a while to realise, the light is definitely ambiguous but when you look at the hands the light falling on them just doesn't make sense. And the side of the upper head would be light, not dark. Unless there's a light floating around between the two heads! So because I wasn't concentrating I dropped the ball. As I said before, Doh!