It’s been a while. I was busy and then simply lazy, but I finally finished it. It’s far from perfect, I’m not happy with the face, but working on an A4 paper is just a pain when drawing a whole figure, the face is so small then that doing details is truly a great challenge. One wrong move and everything looks just wrong… I don’t think I’ll ever do that mistake again and draw a whole person on such a small sheet.
I seem to be unable to just announce it done and leave it be… but at least now I think I’m close to finishing, well closer 🙂
As I’ve been saying, I worked on my last drawing. As Adrian Jordan suggested (and I’m very grateful for that comment), I got rid of the outline.
Eduardo, or Michael for he purposes of my novel
I think I might work a bit more on the hair…
My latest work. In my humble opinion, it’s not so bad. 🙂
As a reference I used a photo of  Eduardo Verástegui, who has just the perfect face. Now, now, I’m not falling for him on anything. His face is how I’m picturing the face of a character in my novel that I’m writing (that’s just one more hobby of mine, one that hopefully one day will end up on a shelf in a bookstore). I can’t really draw without a reference, so I’ve been looking for that face for quite a long time. I found it and I just had to draw it 🙂 And since I found more than one picture of Eduardo AKA Michael (the mentioned character), you can expect more drawings.  🙂
Kids develop in jumps. One day they’re simply sitting and Boom! all of the sudden they’re crawling around. Apparently same goes for my drawing. I had a longish break in drawing, when I finally got back to it, I looked at it differently. I took my time, I played around with shading, tried to perfect every line. But most importantly I began using grid, it’s the first thing I do when drawing. Thanks to the grid, I no longer worry about proportions 🙂 I’m also braver with shading.
The first of the following drawings isn’t perfect. In my defense let me say my reference picture was poor quality, with almost no shading.
Now, with this second one, the reference was of a good quality and in my humble opinion, it shows 🙂
I was asked to draw a bike. I thought it shouldn’t be too challenging, just some straight and curvy lines and it should be done. I couldn’t have been more wrong! There’s loads of things you have to keep in mind when drawing a bicycle, tiny details, shading, curves, proportions. I’d say having a grid can be a lifesaver, as it helps to keep proportions right.
It took me a fair amount of time to do this one.
It’s not perfect, the amount of details overwhelmed me to be honest.
I was asked to draw a bike again, and I was happy to do it, although I knew it’s not going to be easy. I can’t really decide if shading or lots of details is a bigger challenge.
I think I did better with this one. What do you think?
No, this is not me being racist, this is me hating my drawings.
For a long time I drew only animals. I could not draw a human face, no matter how hard I tired. Usually there was something wrong with the nose, or eye set, or general shape of the face. Mostly the nose was giving me a hard time. After a while I stopped even thinking I would ever be able to make a decent drawing of a human face. I focused on animals. These below are the result 🙂
The proportions got better, but it still wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Thing is, I probably put not enough work into those drawings. Some more time and effort and they would look better, but I didn’t see it at the time.
This is a perfect example of bad shading, or rather lack of shading.
This was my budgie and it was all white. I knew it’s going to be difficult to draw it, but I had a go anyway. The result is pretty poor. Looks almost as if it had smooth body, not feathers. I put some shading there, but not enough.
Here’s another, more recent example of poor shading.
It’s better than the parrot, but not there yet. I could defend myself now and say these flowers were too difficult to draw, as they were almost white and shading was near impossible to do, but I think I could have done a better job.
I can’t say it’s the same with all, who start drawing, but I was in a way afraid of shading. I was afraid of making it really dark, I thought it would be too dark, and  wrong. Only lately I realized that it’s actually good. Shades are dark! So if you are like me, if you’re afraid of the dark 😉  don’t be, there’s nothing to be scared of.
Some find it difficult to grade the shade correctly, to ‘go into the light’ from the dark. No pressure, and I mean, no pressure, the lighter your strokes and grip on the pencil are, the easier it will be. Yes, it will take time, but at least you won’t find yourself facing a black spot where it just be just a little grey.
Here’s a proof that dark is good. Making it even darker wouldn’t ruin it, but improved it even more, although it should be applied moderately, the shades are already there, not much more needed.
Unfortunately I can’t share my very first drawings with you, so not stick-men type drawing here. This little piece is my first attempt at more mature drawing, as I would call it.
It’s not entirely bad, but it’s not good either. Fur structure is missing, there’s something wrong with the nose, and is could use some more shading. For a first attempt it’s OK. There was a long road ahead of me at that stage, but it was fun and that’s all that matters really.
Felling that drawing fur is more difficult, I turned to more smooth creatures: butterflies.
Again, they’re missing shading. I could have also use the pencils more skillfully. After butterflies, I attempted drawing more animals, with various results (not always good).
The work is consistent in lacking shading and a ‘realism factor’. These are drawings, no more. Not much life to them. But this was my beginning.
Kate's Art Corner 