Week 21: Renaissance. Focus on Portrait

 This week's task was making a self-portrait in black material. I have done self-portraits before but never looking at a mirror. So I was extremely keen on taking on this challenge. I placed a mirror behind my desk, took my lamp, and set up the lighting set-up and I was good to go.

The first thing I did was a small thumbnail sketch in the corner of my drawing to determine the placement and sizing of the portrait. Then I added some guidelines, as per usual, to make sure the proportions were right.

Following that I started sketching the face, paying attention to every feature, with the goal being to get them as accurate as possible.

After the sketch was done I added some graphite powder to the paper to get a nice starting shade of grey for the portrait. At this stage, I have also erased the highlighted parts of the face.

Then the shading process has begun. Learning from the previous drawing, I tried shading everything a little smoother on the face, making it look more organic.

The last step was adding a gradient colour, to make everything pop even more, and then the drawing was done. I am so happy with how it ended up looking. Drawing looking in the mirror while having a huge light shining directly on my face was not an easy task, but it was totally worth it in the end.

For this drawing, I have used many different pencils: F, HB, H, B, 2B, 3B, 4B, 6B, 8B