This is classwork for Week 2 of my DrawAwesome course. I used Staedtler Mars Lumograph Black pencils for all three of these drawings. (Reference photos from the class.) I am learning how to layer shading with the graphite.
Eye Study (Classwork)
Portraits
Portrait in Charcoal
So this is the completion.. I used charcoal pencils (2B and 6B) — over graphite and the colored pencil, so that was a fail — and willow charcoal.
Photo by Clarke Sanders on Unsplash
This one is more accurate…
Here’s another attempt — same reference and same tracing — (Photo by Clarke Sanders on Unsplash). Much closer, except for the model’s left side.
More Head Practice
Here I was drawing free-hand against a traced copy of the reference photo (by Clarke Sanders on Unsplash). I merged the free-hand and the traced to see how far (or how close) I was to actual proportions. I added red pencil to the free-hand version so the lines would show up better in comparison.
While the face is relatively in the same proportions as the original, it’s substantially smaller all around. (Sigh.)
Sketching another Head…
I’m following along in Nathan Fowkes’ charcoal portraits course, but using graphite and my sketchbook instead of charcoal and newsprint.
This is the initial step.
First Pass.. Head Drawing
This is the first round — no detail, no shading — of a head based on the Reilly method, and as homework for the charcoal portraits online class I’m taking.
Image by Anastasia Gepp from Pixabay
Portrait Sketch — using Reilly Method
This sketch is of a relative.
Drawing Heads – Reilly Method
I recently purchased Nathan Fowkes‘ How to Draw Portraits in Charcoal, and I also just signed up for his online course at Schoolism. It’s a 9-week course, and the idea in the first week is to get busy practicing drawing heads.
I had never heard of the Frank Reilly Method, but what I understand now is that it can assist you in thinking about the 3-dimensional form of the head, and how light and shadow can define the planes of the head.
An example is below — the light lands on the little girl’s face by her right eye in the photo, and in the Reilly drawing, the horizontal lines by the girl’s right eye indicate the planes of her face that would cause the light to land there, and not above or below.
Portrait in Charcoal of Young Indian Girl
This work is based off an image by Sonam Prajapati from Pixabay. It was done in graphite, willow charcoal, and white charcoal. I used white paper, and toned it first.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 