Me, 18" x 24", Pencil and Carcoal (#9)
I am taking a drawing class and this is our first assignment
that I am sharing with you.
It was very interesting and it was good to take a break
from painting and just having a pencil and an eraser.
I think overall it turned out pretty well. This was
my second try and this looks much more like me
than the first one. I like the way the hair is, I am holding
up my medium long locks in the back. I like the angle of the face,
and while I blended a lot, I think I did pretty well creating
a 3-dimensional portrait but room for improvement.
I also like the mouth and nose, I had a challenge lining them up.
My biggest challenge was representing the subtle value
gradations. On the cheek part, there were these light portions
but three different lights.A pink light, a grey light, a yellowish
light. How to represent with just pencil?
Things I want to improve: The variety of my line work,
especially around the edges. Also to losen up a bit.
When drawing a portrait, I tend to get really tight and that is not
my intuitive style, so I am fighting the whole time between my style
and accuracy. Finally, the quality of my hash marks.
I am a blender, and the artist that I tried to model
for this Ingres is not. He creates and builds up dark values
with layering hatch marks.
It did not seem that he blended a lot. It seemed that he took care
of the subtle variations by extending the hash marks and paid
attention to where the second layer should go etc.
If you google Ingres >Drawings, you can see for yourself his style.
I also liked the way he would build up one part,
usually the face and keep other parts
usually the body and background just line work.
He is pretty awesome and I believe you can tell he is a
master draftsman in his paintings.
I am going to give myself a challenge and believe me it will
be a challenge. I am going to try to do another self portrait
without blending.
You can join me if you want. I will post the results
if it comes out halfway decent.
Thanks for reading. Trish
