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…
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.
Kate's Art Corner 