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.

Lesson One: Construction of the Head - Rodents

I actually like how most of these look, and I think the confidence I feel is starting to come through in the drawings. For the most part (except the first one), I think they match Preston Blair's drawings pretty well, but you can always see some differences.

Lesson One: Construction of the Head - Horizontal Egg Head

I think I did much better on the vertical egg head than this one. Trying to get the shape of the egg outline right when looking at the egg in 3/4 profile was tricky, and I don't think I did very well.

Lesson One: Construction of the Head - Elephant

This one was fun, because I liked the design of the elephant, and it was challenging to figure out how far his trunk and ears stuck out.

Lesson One: Construction of the Head - Bulldog

This one was hard. The dog's head has so many things that bulge out, like the jowls, the teeth, and the eyebrows, that made it difficult. I don't think I did so well with this one, and realized only on the later ones that the jowls should wrap around his head. It was also hard to picture what his ears would look like from below.

Lesson One: Construction of the Head - Barney Bear

At this point, I abandoned the graphite pencil, because I was much happier with the non-photo blue pencil drawings before I did the final outline in graphite. I thought it made them look much worse in general, and I think that from this point on, the drawings look better.

I found a model sheet on Goober Sleave and realized that this character was Barney Bear. I thought he looked familiar. If I'd seen these before doing my drawings, that might've helped me envision him better, but I guess I did OK. Still, I had a little trouble getting the shape of his head right, because I was starting to realize that even though these are all based on the vertical egg shape, they aren't exactly egg-shaped - Barney's head is certainly rounder than an egg.