New drawing

[Archie]

After Number 28's 'oil painting' thread I thought it might be interesting to do a thread with progress on the new drawing I'm doing.

I was hoping I'd be able to do this thread earlier but it's taken several days just to get an initial "sketch" I'm reasonably happy with. I'm hoping to use some of the advice I got over in the 'pencil' thread and get some good depth in this one.

This is off the back of a recent drawing, my first in about five years, which went much better than expected so I'm pressing on with more. Unfortunately there's no deadline for this one (the last became a sort of Christmas gift for the person I drew, and I had about a week to do it) as I'm just doing it for myself, so I'm probably dragging my feet too.

Anyway, here goes:

Here's the source:

I'm quite sure there's something wrong with it, but hopefully it'll become clear as time goes on. The photo is taken at a slant, so I'm trying to change her hair a bit. Now for some rendering (that should take care of the scary eyes, at any rate)!

[Kebabilicious]

Dude im no artist, but thats pretty awesome. The shading around the lips looks class. Nice one.

[Sabreman]

Coming along very nicely (though having seen your old stuff I fully expect it to be great anyway). Looks accurate - the forehead in the drawing curves in a little too soon but that's hardly a fundamental issue. It's always tough to compare a line drawing to the subject, some things just don't become clear until you start putting the forms in.

Looking forward to seeing the progress!

[Number 28]

Looking good so far! I've learnt not to worry too much if my initial sketches look a little 'wrong' to me. I figure they always will because i'm used to seeing things with form, and not just a black outline. Both the initial sketches I made looked totally wrong, but I just had to roll with it, and it turned out ok. Saying that, I can afford to have a lot more faith in the initial layout, seeing as I use a grid. That's impractical for a pencil user.

Funny how we both got something done due to xmas, and now we're both dragging our feet.

[Archie]

Cheers folks. I'm quite happy with how it's coming along, although I feel rather weird about posting an update with it in its current half/half condition!

Dude im no artist, but thats pretty awesome. The shading around the lips looks class. Nice one.

Thanks. It took at least four attempts at the mouth, and plenty more bits of fiddling before I was happy with the version above. There's been more fiddling since and I still haven't done much serious rendering there.

Looks accurate - the forehead in the drawing curves in a little too soon but that's hardly a fundamental issue.

I noticed this within about a minute of posting the topic. It's now fixed, or at least better than it was. Also the right side of her face (our left) the curves weren't quite right; also fixed I think.

The weirdest thing about it right now is she's blonde, which makes it hard to judge things like whether I've done her eyes too dark (I hope to fuck I haven't). The lighting of the photo doesn't help with that either! Her hair is going to make a hell of a difference, and will probably take longer than anything else. There's still lots to do. Initial rendering to complete and then tidying up of the face after that.

Anyway, enough gassing:

[Number 28]

I thought you were meant to be slow? Seems to be coming along pretty fast to me, and coming along well too.

You know, you should really do some parodies of the 'Jesus is with you always' sketches.

[Archie]

Well, it feels pretty slow to me. Wait until I get started on the hair - that'll just be painful.

What are these sketches you speak of? Needless to say googling that phrase does me no good at all.

[Number 28]

Here you go http://members.aol.com/jesusimages/

[Archie]

We're cooking on gas now, folks:

This has come quite a long way. The shape and positioning of several things in the first sketch looks quite crude now. The eyes are a bit staggered, but it's within an acceptable tolerance... nnngh, yes it is.

Now I have to fudge some hair, for the aforementioned reasons. This'll be the hard part, methinks.

[Tempy]

I looked at the first picture and thought 'hmm, it's ok....not that great though', but people were being nice about it. I guess I couldn't see the potential.

Then I look at the pic above and it's like BAM! that is absolutely amazing. The shading is fantastic, and it completely changes the look of the picture. I'm so jealous. I would love to be able to draw like that. Great work Archie. Looking forward to seeing the finished item.

Equally impressed with Number 28's oil paintings too. I would love to able to do something like that. Amazing work.

[Number 28]

I looked at the first picture and thought 'hmm, it's ok....not that great though', but people were being nice about it. I guess I couldn't see the potential.

Well, we've seen this guy's work in another thread which makes it a lot easier to see the potential you mention.

Equally impressed with Number 28's oil paintings too. I would love to able to do something like that. Amazing work.

Cheers!

[Archie]

I looked at the first picture and thought 'hmm, it's ok....not that great though', but people were being nice about it. I guess I couldn't see the potential.

The early picture was pretty bad in a number of ways (shapes of things and positioning, and without proper shading the eyes looked downright weird), most of which I've hopefully sorted now.

Then I look at the pic above and it's like BAM! that is absolutely amazing. The shading is fantastic, and it completely changes the look of the picture. I'm so jealous. I would love to be able to draw like that. Great work Archie. Looking forward to seeing the finished item.

Thanks very much. Only the hair is left (I'll probably do another shading pass over everything before the end though) but that took up about 2/3 of the time I spend on my last picture, so it remains to be seen how much longer this is going to take. Helps that it is pretty straight.

[Archie]

It's finally complete. I started on the hair yesterday at about lunchtime, and have worked more or less non-stop since then. Finished about twenty minutes ago. *sigh*

Here's the final few stages.

I wasn't too sure what to do with the hair and didn't really like what I had in the last photo, so I went with a basic style I like; I'm rather out of my depth 'designing' hair and it's usually the most scrappy element of my drawings.

I tried doing it with one side over her shoulder as in the source photo, but it doesn't really work in this style as the curved fronds frame the face really nicely, but when they're on their own (as the right one would be in the photo above) they look a bit weird.

Now I'm making a little progress, I have the idea of the look I want, but I haven't gone any deeper than 2B yet, so there's still several shading passes left to do:

Still on 2B, trying to get both sides done before I go any darker. It's a real slog, and I have to keep contorting so I can avoid all the graphite reflections and see properly.

Aaaand the finished drawing. All shading done down to 6B, and I added a bit more 'volume' to the hair on one side. I like the style but again, I'm a bit out of my depth trying to hash this stuff and I think it shows.

I tried to add a little more depth to her eyes and the surrounds as they help emphasise her smile. Also, I noticed just before finishing that I'd positioned virtually all of her teeth completely wrongly, and had drawn the majority too small as well. Fixed, tidied up some shading around her mouth which makes her smile look much better. Also shaded her neck and made a last pass over a few bits with a 4B. I couldn't get anything useful from the source photo I could use to draw some shoulders, so there's a regrettable 'floating head' look to the thing, but hey ho.

I've been your host Archie, thanks for watching, I'm off to bed.

[Number 28]

Let me be the first to say, top dollar! Man, shut up about not being this and that, anyone would be hard pressed to find fault in the hair or whatever. That sort of self-criticism leads to madness. I know what it's like though, so I can't talk I guess.

The softer/darker pencils are clearly working for you. Gives it a *lot* more contrast and depth. Maybe before you would've left it looking similar to the second pic down? But taking it that step further has really made it leap off the page a lot more. Top stuff!

[Capwn]

impressive. you've captured the 'soul' and 'character' well

[Archie]

Cheers guys. I am happy with it but you know how it is - we're our own worst critics (usually).

I should really go eat something now, since I ate only a big bag of peanut M&Ms during the ~15hrs it took to finish this.

[donnie_darko]

That's very impressive. It was great to see how it progresses over time too. What are you going to do next?!

[Archie]

Well, eat and sleep for a bit..

I'm planning to do Idris Elba next.

[Sabreman]

Superb stuff Archie.

[Archie]

Thank'ou kind sir.

[futureshock]

Yeah, it's nice to see the progression. Well done, dude.

[Tofu]

WOWeeeeee!!!

[rylee]

An impressive final result!

It was great to see the progression of the image and to hear some of your concerns along the way. Well done.

[Archie]

Cheers everyone.

Here's a scan, in which the contrast seems oddly to have suffered:

[Tempy]

Absolutely incredible. Very jealous of your pencil skills indeed.

[Meers]

Wow! I used to draw 'cartoon' characters like that (Kung Lao of Mortal Kombat 2 fame amongst others - need to digg that up again) when I was younger, but I wasn't nearly as good with the shading as you. I'm very impressed.

[Archie]

Thankyou again.

[Archie]

I've already started slacking somewhat, I see. Three months now since the last drawing. I'm hoping posting updates here will keep me going, as progress so far has been rather torpid.

2008's first customer is Idris Elba, as seen (I gather) in The Wire, getting shot in the face by Denzel Washington in American Gangster, and first seen by me in 98's Ultraviolet. Great face.

Aand my version so far:

It's still at the initial crap-sketch stage, with a few things contrived and me unable to see the link between this and whatever it ends up as, but that always happens. I've moved from A4 to A3 for this one, hoping I might be able to get some more detail in. I'm using lighter paper now too, since I started using soft pencils on the last drawing. When I first started I used lighter paper (~115gsm, as opposed to 224gsm for the previous one above) and have noticed I got much subtler rendering with it than the heavier stuff I've been using recently.

The difficult thing I'm finding so far about A3 is judging scale; it's easy enough to use the pencil or whatever to check these things with A4, but it is usually too small for A3 so I'm having to use paper edges with markings on and stuff, and I'm not quite sure I've got the overall proportions right. Trying to avoid obsessive "slideshowing" over little details this time

[Archie]

I was right

I've been working on this quite a bit today, and here's the latest couple of stages:

A lot more sketchy than my previous efforts, which I kinda like. In that IMO it looks quite like the guy already even though I haven't got a vast amount of detail in there yet. I used to delve into maximum detail straight away, which I only started to break out of with the last drawing. I imagine it shows in the "quality" of those initial sketches.

Anyway, quite happy with it so far and looking forward to going further.

[Number 28]

Already looking great - can't wait to see the end result. This is going to be ace. *thumbs*