Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Portrait - Rod Serling

For my last portrait exercise from "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" (I know, I was supposed to use a real live person and one with a hat, so sue me), I decided to draw one of the geniuses of television, Rod Serling. I've always thought he had an interesting face, and this portrait is from his later, "Night Gallery" years.

It's apparent to me that I need to work on my shading more to create a better range of values, and I think I need to work on measuring. I think I'm going to try loosening up my pencil and not pay so much attention to little details. We'll see.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Portrait - Isabella Brant

I loved this drawing, "Isabella Brant" (1621), by Peter Paul Rubens from the first time I saw it, so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm fairly happy with how it came out, although I see some problems in the left side of the drawing, and I wish I was better at shading. That's ok, because that's the next chapter of the book. I also seem to have problems with mouths, so maybe after I'm done with this book I'll focus on them for a while. We'll see.

I welcome any feedback anyone might have about how I might improve my drawings. Am I getting any better?

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Portrait

For my first head-on portrait for my "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" exercise, I chose my old favorite, Boris Karloff. Hey, he's got a great face! As with all the others, I'm happy with this, although the size of that ear on the left side keeps bothering me. I might have to correct it.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - 3/4 Profiles Part 2

Continuing my profile exercises from "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", here are two works based on the works of old masters. The first one I'm really happy with - it's based again on a Hans Holbein the Younger drawing, "Portrait of Sir Richard Southwell" c. 1537.




I'm not as happy with the second one, based on Jean Clouet's "Portrait of a Young Woman". The biggest problem is that the drawing I had to base it on is only about 1 1/2" high, and my drawing is 9 or 10 inches high, so there wasn't much detail to follow. I guess I got the proportions mostly correct, so the exercise wasn't a complete failure.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - 3/4 Profile

I've always thought that William S. Burroughs had an interesting face, especially when he got really old, so I decided to make him the subject of my 3/4 profile portrait. Although this is really a middle aged William S. Burroughs, he's still got enough lines and sags in his face to make it fun to draw. I drew this one during my lunch break earlier this week and did some fixing of it today. I learned a valuable lesson, since I didn't follow all of the rules of measuring explained in the book. Originally, the right side of Mr. Burroughs' head was too large, and it bothered me until I fixed it today, being careful to measure the distance that his ear should be from his eye. I think it's much better now, although I'm still not entirely happy with it.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Profiles from Master Artists

The next exercises from "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" were to copy profile portraits done by any of the master artists - one of a male and one by a female. I chose to copy "Simon George of Quocote" by Hans Holbein the Younger (1543) and "Study of a Young Woman in Profile" by Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1485-7).




After starting the S. George portrait, I started to wish I hadn't picked one with facial hair and the stylized hair that Holbein had done. Still, other than the moustache, I'm fairly happy with this one.




There's something about the forehead on the female portrait I did that I'm not happy with - I think it's too vertical. And the chin isn't quite right. I could've added more detail to this, but I again gave myself a lunch hour to complete this. My shading can't compare to Leonardo's, but if I'd had longer, I might've done a better job on this one.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Profile Drawing

At lunchtime today, I drew this portrait - one of the exercises in the book, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". Although the instructions indicated that a live model was supposed to be used, I didn't want to ask anyone to sit for me. Maybe one of these days I can work up the nerve to do that.

The book was very helpful in describing how to correctly place features on a person's face when drawing it - in the past, I'd just drawn features as I went along. I'm pretty happy with this one, considering it took about 45 minutes to do. A couple of minor complaints: again, I've cut made the drawing too large for the page and have cut off the back of the man's head; I used a 2B pencil, which I'd never done before, and ended up smudging the nose and mouth area a bit; I'm not too happy with the shading on the cheek and neck area, but I was hurrying to finish, and thought I'd leave it as is, since that was the end of that. Still, I'm happy with the likeness of this man, whoever he is.