I thought i would try to make another autoportrait, but after two attemps at a base sketch, i was still not very happy with it, so i went on to try and draw some of the details. I think if af gained a better understanding of the eyes from that.. I might do some sketches of each individual facial feature before trying the whole self-portrait again.. When each part is right, it’ll just be a question of getting the proportions right. Which is of course the hardest part!
I’ll (hopefully) be doing some sketching at school today for some analysis of a site.. Very sketchy.. I hope that my “pencil hand” will move a little more free after these last couple of weeks daily drawings – i’ll be posting the results later!
Fell free to comment.
Okay, here’s some friendly constructive criticism:
A. Stop drawing from a photo. Draw from life
B. Turn your head more. Your almost at a full frontal view here and that is HARD. Profile is the best for beginners.
C. Don’t smile, lol. Keep it simple. Besides artist are all sour pusses anyway, right? 😉
D. Stop thinking about drawing a face. It’s messing you up, A face is just like the leaves and streets you’ve been drawing- line and shadow.
E. Trick- turn your drawing upside down from time to time. The mistakes will pop out at you!
F. Trick#2- back up from your drawing. Like get up and walk away (so you look away for a minute) and look from a distance. You will see mistakes that way too.
You have talent. Really, you do, no bullsh*t. Your drawing of the peppers and leaves and streets kick ass. Now, do that with a face. Line and shadow. You CAN.
And gets some books on artists that do portraits- you may like John Sargent.
Happy Drawing. You’re doing fabulous.
Maybe if i composed my face out of leaves and peppers ;).. It’s strange you, that a face is so hard to reproduce while i do other things much better.. I think it’s got to do with our brains’ software for recognising… We’re made for recognising faces we know, but not for recognising peppers we know, so while our perception is forgiving to imprecision in vegetables, it can’t quite figure out what’s going on if the nose is too big..
Thanks for your suggestions, i’ill definetly check what John Sargent is about. As for this photo – i might have chosen an easier photo to work from, but i think that if i continue, at some point i’ll master this one.. In the spirit of this blog, I think it could be interressting for comparability to have the same motif from the beginning to ? – some point where it looks much better.. As long as it doesn’t give me gray hair or ulcers, I’ll keep revisiting this one.