Sustained Investigation #2

Lady

Graphite and white gel pen

9in x 12in

This is my Sustained Investigation 2, for this project I was planning on just drawing hair and I wanted to give it a messy look but I ended up drawing a whole face too and now I'm very glad that I did. This is not anyone in particular, I just wanted to draw a random person. I have never been good at drawing curly hair so for this project I wanted to try and dig into it more and get better at it, although my focus shifted once I got more into detail on the face.

The work was made in entirely graphite with small highlights with a white gel pen. As my inquiry question is about the contrast you can show with graphite on the human body. I am very happy with all the shading I got done on the face although I do think the area under the chin and on the nose gets a bit muddy with graphite because I had to erase parts and redo them, especially on the lips.

Obviously I wanted to focus a lot on contrast in this piece because that is the point of my project, this is what inspired me to add the white highlights with a gel pen. My project evolved a lot, as I stated before, I wanted to only draw the hair of the person but I changed my mind. I also originally give the person huge lips but I felt like they looked weird with the thin eyebrows which I liked and didn't want to change so I made them thinner. I do wish there was a background to the piece but I'm not quite sure of what it would be on this project.