I slept for crap. Seems I picked a bug somewhere so coughing and a runny nose kept me up almost all night. So I figured if I’m already in a foul mood might as well push myself to the very ends of hell.
Drawing. Yes drawing. For the last 10 years or so I been only doing illustrations. I tried many sorts of techniques and mediums and to me it seemed like ages before I found my style or should I say a niche. So naturally, when I did found it I stuck to it like glue.
The thing about finding your own style is - you place yourself in a comfort zone. In a way you become untouchable. This is me, this is how I do my stuff, take it or leave it.
The last time I did a portrait was in my college years … so … almost 15 years ago. We had to draw my schoolmate. Let’s skip to the ending of this story. She didn’t look anything like herself.
And here I am again. I was intrigued … and scared. I was actually nervous how this will turn out. Oh don’t get me wrong I am extremely rarely scared of other people’s thoughts and opinions. I am scared mostly of myself. Let’s just say I have no mercy when it comes to my work. It’s simply never (and I do mean never) good enough.
So let’s do this. I took pictures of the steps in case someone can find use of them.
1.) For the love of pretzels I could not decide between gray and black paper. I wanted a darker brown shade of it, but when you live in the middle of nowhere you are lucky to even get colored paper.
2.) I ended up picking the gray one and after the sketch I started filling in the details.
3.) When I got to the hair…I knew I should have went with the black paper. After some intense swearing and a smoke break I forced myself to kind of finish.
4.) The drawing itself needs about 2 more hours of work.
Pros: I’m happy enough with the colors, shading and some detail parts.
Neg: The guy doesn’t rly look like himself. :) Think the blame is in the face being too broad, nose is not long enough. I think I should go with more artistic way with his right eye and kinda make it more similar to the left one. But at that point I was too scared he won’t resemble himself if I took too much artistic freedom with it. But it happened nevertheless.
5.) If you happen to see some GIOTTO brand coloring pencils – DON’T! Whatever was left of them I simply threw in the trash.