Portraits Week II

This week went a lot better, I will say right off the bat.  I don't know if I was just in a better mood to draw or what, but I was able to tackle the unconventional view with relative ease, with Amy helping me with only a few parts.  Here are what those were:

First, the hair.  Enough said, haha!  Well, Amy suggested I try to blend more like I did with Sara's 3/4 back portrait and so I tried.  I like the final result, but I will go back this morning before class and try to define some more of the hair because it still looks a little blocky and the overlapped piece of hair is super dark, which is great, but I would want the rest of the hair to be a bit more shaded as well so the transition is not so harsh.

Second, the ear ended up being WAY far away from the face so in all, her cranium was abnormally large as if gravity was pulling her hair and ear down and away!  So I drew in more hair and redrew the ear in its proper position and it pulled the composition together beautifully.  I was thinking there was something terribly wrong with the structure and it turns out that is exactly what it was.  I am so glad Amy caught and I was able to fix it in class quick before it ended so I could still have the model to do it.  Is this new ear as good as my original?  Not nearly.  I was very proud of my original ear and disheartened that I had to redraw so it just did not turn out the same.

3/4 front

After this unconventional view, I took a look at my two previous drawings and decided I desperately had to go back to my 3/4 front view and fix the shading, it just didn't look like I drew it at all, the style was totally unlike mine and even though I really wanted to explore other styles this semester, I don't think this particular one was successful.  Hopefully it looks a little better, I want to go back
and fix the transition from neck to jaw line.  It, like other aspects of my drawings, ended up too harsh and they almost look disconnected and overlapping, when in fact they do not do that on the live model.

Portraits

3/4 front

This week we worked on our final portraits on our good paper.  I began with the three quarter front view because I wanted to get those facial features out of the way.  In retrospect I probably should have waited because it did not turn out quite like I expected, again probably owing to the fact that I could have used a bit more practice before we started these.  I think it all went down hill when I started to shade the drawing.  I started with the darkest parts first, but I made the left cheek subtle, which makes the eyes look so dark and  raccoon-like.  It seems like an easy fix, though, so I will have to set aside some time on Monday during class to doctor it up a bit.

3/4 back

Second, I did the three quarter back view.  This one went much smoother, but Amy helped me to see a lot of the things I was doing unconsciously.  First of all, I drew highlights in the hair that were too sharp they started to look like stripes so she showed me how to fix them with an eraser (I still have a little work to do there).  She also noticed that I had a lot of thick lines in the hair that outlined and made the sections of hair look flat, I believe I did try to thin those up.  The one thing I still need to work on is the neck, you may have noticed it right away, I made it way too thin.  When you are working on the same drawing for a long time like these drawings sometimes you tend to miss the obvious while you figure out the details.  At least that is what happens to me.

old master portrait - Raphael

I researched a little on old master drawings since I don't have any of the books from class at my disposal.  I found one that I really like because it accomplishes what I am struggling with, shading effectively to show subtle form without harshness and clearly defining the light source by only shading one plane of the cranium.  

Face

nose

This week we all worked on facial features, focusing on the nose, eyes, ears and neck.  We modeled for each other, which I have to say was extremely difficult for me.  I think my body runs on pure adrenaline so sitting still for even a half hour made me so sleepy, I kept nodding off!  Drawing from a personal model where you could get right up close to see the forms and plane changes was helpful to me, especially since I have not drawn a face from life or even tried to draw a realistic face for over a year!

nose, eye, mouth

I had completely forgotten how to draw the nose, but thanks to Amy's guidance, I slowly figured it out after a couple of long poses.  I tried the eyes on the second pose and did a much better job at remembering the structure, but as far as how well I drew them, I will leave that up for comments.  I always think I can improve.  I also tried to draw the mouth even though that was not what we were specifically working on.  I felt that I would struggle the most with this part of the face as I did in Life Drawing 1.  As you can see, I struggled again, it is difficult to figure out how to show the roundness both of the upper and lower lip individually as well as get them to look like they wrap around the jaw.  Mine look flat because I could not quite figure this part out.  The last section I practiced was the neck and as Amy said, we do not typically practice this enough so mine was a simple line drawing.  The neck muscles are so subtle, especially on women (as my model was) it will be easier I think when we do our final portraits to capture that subtle form  with shading.

neck

I only wish we could have had maybe one more day or even a half day to practice drawing the face before we started the final portraits.  On Wednesday we got our paper and learned more about drawing facial features, especially the neck, but let out early without starting to draw anything, which was great!  But in retrospect I could have definitely used the practice.