Week 20 - Head Construction

 I was extremely happy when I saw this week's task. Portraits are my ultimate favorite thing to draw. They are the thing that I have the biggest amount of experience with as well. I have done life drawing before and I really think that should be the only way to draw a portrait, photos flattening the image so badly. It is just a whole different thing looking at a person in a three-dimensional space. The depth that is translated into the portrait is undeniably better than any other options. 

I asked a friend to pose for me and she happily agreed.

The first step was throwing some guidelines on the paper, making sure the proportions were right.

After that, I started sketching in the shape of the head and face.

Then I made a quick sketch of her entire face, making sure everything was symmetrical. 

Then I refined everything, focusing on the accuracy of her facial features, trying to make the drawing resemble her as much as possible, 

After that, I have deleted the guidelines and mapped out where the shadows and highlights were going to be.

When that was done, I went in and added some graphite powder to get a nice base colour for the drawing and erasing the highlighted areas.

The following step was starting the shading process, focusing on adding more detail to each element of the drawing.

For the hair, I have separated it into individual strands, then started to add shading to each individually.

final piece

The final step was adding a nice gradient background to make the highlighted parts pop more. It was the same case for the shadows.

I am more than pleased with how this drawing turned out and I can not wait to make more portraits!

For this piece I have used a range of pencils: F, HB, B, 28, 3B, 4B, 6B, 8B