This speaks for itself, and is based from the awesome book Mark Crilley’s Ultimate Book of Drawing Hands.

This speaks for itself, and is based from the awesome book Mark Crilley’s Ultimate Book of Drawing Hands.

This drawing is based on a photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash which was used in the ArtTutor.com “How to Draw Portraits (in Graphite) by Phil Davies.
I did this portrait using charcoal and graphite.

Ears are something I need to practice as well, mostly because I want to get the inner shapes right on a profile-view.


I have several books on portrait drawing, and drawing facial features. This is practice drawing eyes, and remembering that eye is actually a ball. The eyelids wrap around the spherical shape of the eyeball.

I recently purchased the book Mark Crilley’s Ultimate Book of Drawing Hands, because I have such difficulty drawing hands, particularly fingers. I can look at my left hand and draw it, palm down or palm up, but things like a hand at rest, a hand holding a spoon, a hand on the hip are more challenging.
I think this book will help me — assuming I practice daily.
Here are my first attempts.


This was done in vine charcoal, and was based on a reference photo and lesson in the “Sketching Places Quickly” course by Phil Davies on ArtTutor.com.

The reference photo I used here was an image by Capri23auto from Pixabay. Earlier in my life, I lived at a house where purple and white irises like these grew.
I drew the outline in vine charcoal, and used Derwent pastel pencils for the color.

This was done on 6×8 white Pastelmat, sketched first using an H pencil. I did not do an underpainting.


This study was based off a reference photo from an ArtTutor class I took. This is my first time using willow charcoal, which seems to me quite similar to vine charcoal, only it’s black as opposed to dark gray. And it’s a bit harder than the vine charcoal, although both are labeled Medium, and the manufacturer (Winsor) is the same.
