As my aim was shading more than line drawing I decided to use the easy grid method. I used A3 paper and 10mm grid cells. I am fortunate enough to have access to a large format printer so I was able to print the grid on a single sheet of paper. The line drawing took a few days as I was trying to be patient from the start and the reference had a lot of details with a varied hair style. The line work was done lightly using the HB pencil but did not scan well enough to be seen.
After the background the hair too a long time in stages. The hair took about as long to draw as the rest of the image did in total.
Here I drew just enough of the hair as was required before starting on the face. The shading of the hair was build up in layers, starting with the 4H to provide some highlights, which indented the paper and helped to give structure to the darker tones. The tones were built up to the 6B. I also went over the 6B with the lighter 4H and H to blend them in.
For the skin I used a mixture of cross hatching and circular shading, and built up the layers from 4H to 2B. The light base layer helped with blending the darker tones and kept the tones light. I didn't use a blending stump this time but I may try one again in a future drawing. Before staring on the face I also placed a few hair lines with the 4H to keep them light as I planned to add the hairs covering the eye once the face shading had been completed. Overall the use of the 4H for keeping light lines and blending the darker tones seemed to work really well.
After staring the skin tones on the face I felt that I needed the darker features such as the eyes and brows adding so that the lines didn't get lost in the light tones and to provide a contrast for the shading.
To complete the face I then blended to the light round the side of the head and jaw, then added the edge of the hair to frame the face.
I then continued and finished the rest of the hair, providing the main area of dark tones for the drawing.
With the hair completed I worked left to right, or dark to light rendering the skin. I worked in sections of upper arm then lower arm, to avoid loosing the light line work and building up the tone grades.
For the front arm I started with the 4H again and worked up slowly with lighter tones as I wanted to keep the edge of the arm light, with a bit more contrast than was in the reference.
Finally I kept the tones on the other arm light and used the 4H and H to softly finish the cloth. I also went back to add some darker tones to her right arm to increase the contrast with the background and to match the tone of the face better.
Overall this project took just under two weeks and I have learnt a lot about graphite shading. I have really enjoyed seeing this come together and I am looking forward to my next project after stopping of to practice with some blending.
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