Grant - WIP 4

Grant now has a full head of hair. It was tricky, because he's got some long locks that overlap others, and a lot of wave, so I had to be careful and do each lock at a time. I tried to keep the band of light consistent as well as the shading on the sides. Next I'll tackle the plaid shirt he's wearing, another first for me. Wish me luck.

Grant - WIP 3

I finally worked up the nerve to start Grant's hair. This is the first time I've tried to create realistic hair - in the past, I'd do the face and then quickly top it off+ with hair that amounted to scribbles that somewhat followed the direction of hair growth. I'm happier with how this came out so far.

Grant - WIP 2

I spent a little more time on Grant, giving him ears and a mouth. I've also done his neck, but haven't scanned that part yet. I'm frankly nervous about doing his hair - I'm very pleased with how it looks so far, and I don't have any experience really trying to do realistic hair.

Grant WIP 1

I'm taking a little break from eye studies - I literally have 20 or so sources for my studies, and it's become a little overwhelming (and repetitive). After studying Vanderpoel, it's all downhill from there anyway.

Having recently read J.D. Hillberry's "Drawing Realistic Textures in Pencil" and Lee Hammond's "How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs", I decided to try just that - drawing a portrait from a photograph. I chose my youngest son, Grant, whose 18 month portaits were taken just a couple of months ago. I liked the expression on his face in this one, and thought it would make a good model for my first serious portrait attempt. I've spent a few lunch hours and an evening on it so far, and have used mostly F, 2B and 3B graphite with just a little charcoal for the eyes and some accents. I think overall it's pretty good, but I may need to lighten it up a bit. I'm worried about the hair, because I haven't really had much experience doing realistic hair. We'll see how it goes.

Eye Studies Part 6: Gary Faigin, "The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expressions"

There are lots of books that describe themselves as "definitive", but I haven't seen many that live up to that description as well as Gary Faigin's book, "The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expressions". Faigin not only goes into great detail about facial structures, and what the artist should be aware of above and below the surface, but it backs each observation up with numerous illustrations. This book rivals Vanderpoel's book in its detailed analysis of the underlying structure of the face, and it focuses mainly on what makes one face different from another, and how facial expressions change its appearance.

Eye Studies Part 5: George Bridgman, "Constructive Anatomy"

I've read that you either love Bridgman or you hate him. I tend not to like him so much, because his drawings, even though they are intended to give anatomical instruction, are more like grotesque exaggerations of human anatomy. Peoples' bodies don't really look like they do in his drawings - they're more like comic book illustrations where every feature is blown out of proportion. Perhaps this is to draw the student's attention to certain features. In any case, I find it distracting.

The section "The Eye" in Bridgman's book "Constructive Anatomy" (available for download from Internet Archive) contains a brief description of the anatomy of the eye structure, followed by several pages of Bridgman's eye drawings ("The Eye Socket: Wedges, Planes and Their Angles", "The Eye: Angular Opening Between the Lids", and "The Eye"). I did appreciate Bridgman's text, which is reminiscent of John Vanderpoel's descriptions (both books date from the early part of the 20th century), not just in its wording but how the matter is approached.

Eye Studies Part 4: JR Dunster, "How to Draw Eyes"

portrait-artist.org is "a portrait art tutorial site, with lessons on sketching and drawing faces, tutorials on digital art, an overview of art and drawing techniques, art supplies, book recommendations, anatomy, and much more." JR Dunster has created many tutorials to help aspiring artists who have an interest in drawing portraits.

Dunster's tutorial, "How to draw eyes, step-by-step drawing lesson", demonstrates to the reader how to perceive the eye, as well as how to render it in a drawing. He begins with a description of how to "see" the eye (Dunster recommends Betty Edwards' excellent "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" to his readers), using illustrations to show the eye's depth and shape, and reminds the reader not to forget the thickness of the eyelids (or the "tear duct thingie"!), and shows the subtle angles of the top lid. An important point that Dunster reiterates for the reader is that the iris is perfectly round, as is the pupil, which is perfectly centered within it. This seems like a simple point, but it's an important one - I've seen many drawings in which the iris is not round, nor is the pupil correctly centered.

After the overview of what to look for in the eye, Dunster goes into how he renders it, going over shading the iris for realism and shading the eyeball and adding eyelashes.

Ironically, his step-by-step diagram on how to draw the eye is, after four pages of overview, very brief. It consists of drawing an outline, followed by drawing in the lower lid, pupil, and highlight, and then adding shading and detail. To be fair, not only is most of this covered in the preceding pages, but as Dunster mentions, he does expect his reader to have some experience in drawing.

I did appreciate his "quick step-by-step of the eyebrow", which comes next, as it was useful to see how the shading should be deeper below the "brow line".

The last part of the tutorial is a brief description of what to notice when viewing the eye from the side.

I got many useful bits of information and tips from Dunster's tutorial, including his illustration of the basic shape of the eye (the widest part of the top of the eye is further in than the widest part of the bottom of the eye), and his suggestion about "suggesting" the thickness of the lower eyelid. I also thought it was useful to know that the upper eyelid covers about 1/3 (sometimes more) of the iris, and that the "white" of the eye is actually a "very, very pale peach, or pale greyish-peach" (I'm color blind and would never have noticed that).

Here are my eye sketches following Dunster's tutorial - the first is based on the one he uses in the tutorial, and the second is based on a photo of an eye, using Dunster's steps and mimicking his style.



Up next: Gary Faigin's "The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expressions"