Dribble

This was a fun project. Again using Faber-Castell 9000 on 250 gsm Bristol board, and the reference for this image was a still taken from a low resolution video clip.

With this project I wanted to try drawing from a low quality reference to see how much impact it had on the final image, and to try and use an image where the light had not been adjusted specifically for a front lit portrait shot. The reason for using a low quality image was that if successful would widen the range of reference images I could use, and also by using a low-res image I was pushed to imagine more of the details while maintaining reference proportions. As I result I found the reference challenging to use but really enjoyable as I felt free from the focus of making it 'right'.

So as before I started out with the easy grid method.

The line for this was much rougher than with my other projects as the reference was not as clear. The HB pencil didn't scan too well here.

I started with the hair in the top left again to avoid smudging. Here I started with the hard pencils and worked towards the softer cores.

I then took the hair on the left side down to help frame the face. At this stage the hair was left with a lighter tone, in order to balance the tones later with reference to the rest of the image.

The hair the came in front of the leather strap was particularly difficult to see in the reference image and so I put that in place first to preserve the edge of some of the lighter tones that may have got lost with the surrounding  darker shades.

I then added the to leather strap. Here again it has a light tone, as with the hair the darker tones will be added later in order to keep them balanced.

To frame the face I completed the hair on the right. In this scan the image looks really light.

There was a bit of a jump here as I needed to reboot the host to update my virtual kernel drivers to get the scanner back on line. The hair took a while to draw, but the face was much quicker. I first added the lower leather straps and more dark tone to the top strap. Then I added the eyes and upper face skin tones.  The tone round the nose took a while and a lot of adjustment as the models nose was being pulled up, the shade was not falling as close to the nose as usual. This pull of the straps also had a big effect on the skin round the left eye, which I adjusted again later.

The details of the ball straps were fun and required strong contrast to help define them. The tone of the lips was very close to that of the skin on the face, so I made it a bit darker than the reference to help define it a little more. The models lips were being pulled out of shape a bit by the ball, and had a tone very similar to that of the ball so I needed again to add more definition here.

Again to help distinguish the ball from the lips I made the ball darker than the reference. The darker tones used on the ball also helped with the contrasting saliva highlights on the top. The lower lip was also difficult to see as it was partly obscured by the ball and lightened by the light reflected on the pooling saliva. I also made the left eye larger as the pulled skin round the eye was unclear.

To frame the face I then added the lower hair bunches and the shaded skin under the chin area. I added the hair on the left first, then the lower neck strap, the skin and then the hair on the right. This area of the reference was very unclear and I drew on other parts of the video as a guide.

Then I added the skin tones to the shoulder area and a little to the models back that was just in shot. I wasn't sure about adding the back, but in the end I felt it looked better.

The finally I darkened the tone of the skin and made the final scan. 

I am pleased with the results of this and hope to use some more video references in the future.

Off the shoulder

Well I started this project to test the Derwent Graphic pencils again, with some blending, but it didn't turn out as expected. The Derwent pencils turned out to be really rubbish, and blending with them didn't help. The pencils were still too gritty and cut up the paper too much making building up layers very rough.

So as I liked the reference image here I tried again using my Faber-Castell 9000 pencils, which I needed to supplement with a few new pencils to fill the gaps in the range. These pencils were much better, but still the drawing was difficult.

As before I started with a line drawing using my easy grid method.

Here I have completed the line work and started to add some of the hair to frame the face.

I then added more of the hair and the edge of the ear. This was difficult as the reference image had a lot of mid tones that together made it difficult to pick out what was going on in the picture. I found zooming out of the reference image a lot here helped.

To help frame the face more I then added tone to the neck. I think this may have been a bad move and was the start of my problems. I also during this project, I think I started too many of the dark areas with too light a tone before building up. I think these early light layers overworked the paper and resulted in some darker spots in the final image.

I then moved focus to the eyes. In retrospect I think I should have started this drawing with the eyes as they have the most detail and also represented the darkest and lightest tones in the image. This would have given me a good reference for the tones of the face the the next area that I had already done. 

Continuing with the eyes I added more dark tones. I really like the way the eyes turned out and I think they are probably the best part of the drawing, but after completing them I could then see that the tone of the eye required the rest of the image to be much darker than I had planned.

To continue with the main facial features I added the tones for the side of the nose. Again I really liked the way this turned out, but in the end I needed to make this darker which was a shame.

Adding the mouth completed the main features. Again I was really please with how the mouth turned out, but it too had to go darker to balance the tone of the drawing.

The large shadow on the face was next, and proved to be the most difficult part of the drawing. It was practically difficult to lay down such a large dark area of tone and also to blend it in. At this point I realise I needed to balance the tones, and in particular darken the mid tones of the hair, ear and neck.

To finish I added tone to the shoulder and darkened the neck. The tone of this is smoother than seems to have come out on the scanner. I am guessing that this may be due to some glare or graphite reflection of the scanner.

Overall this image was much more difficult than I had expected and I will practice shading dark tones on large areas before my next project.