Week 8- Plaster Head

I have never drawn a plaster head before., but since it is a head afterall, I decided to approach it just like I would a regular portrait, with the exception of not adding that much surface detail.

After making a quick preparatory sketch, I started building the head. Something that I have noticed straight away was that one side of the face was more angular and geometrical, most probably to teach the students the planes of the face, so I decided to retain that in my drawing, Having a side with very visible differences in planes, and one softer and with more details, 

After getting the general shapes, i went back and refined the features of the face, in orfer to get a more accurate representation of the real thing.

The next step was adding the graphite powder and erasing the highlights while also brightening up the whole paster head, since it is supposed to be a white object.

 While shading, I tried to be mindful to not darken the plaster head too much. I have also used a more geometrical approach, using hatching most of the time. 

Looking at the final result, I can say that I like it, but I am noticing some mistakes straight away. The most obvious one is that the head looks a bit deformed, having some issues regarding the perspective.

Another one is that the tonal value of the plaster head is way too dark, which lead me to do a very dark background, to make it look lighter.