Embedded Files
Human Portraits & Character
Submission Pieces
Submission Pieces
Human Portraits
Human Portraits
week 1 - Practice Session
week 1 - Practice Session
No.1 - First attempt needed some warming up. I drew her eyes further apart than they should be. Also the cranium looks really small and should have been wider and taller. I didn't manage to capture the fierce and more powerful look to her. Mine ended up looking a lot softer in comparison.
No.2 - This was a difficult angle with an ethnicity I'm not so used to studying. The eye furthest from us should stick out further and his lips look too vague ( I need to imply more dimension to them). The Cranium also isn't large enough.
No.3 - his eyes are slightly too close together. apart from muddy rendering I think this one is alright but the foreshortening could be implied more effectively.
No.5 - This was difficult. I find drawing older women really difficult. Getting wrinkles down in the correct places, trying to imply light eyelashes and sagging skin whilst also trying to capture their unique beauty is incredibly challenging.
No.4 - this was the easiest to complete. I had his features down within 10min. the rest of the time was spent on a bit of rendering
No.6 - I think rendering is the only thing that's really bringing this one down. I did draw her eyes slightly more open and less fierce but I think that's it.
Reflection
Reflection
I had a pretty bad drawing session in the studios on Monday. Drawing felt off and I still struggle to enjoy drawing a subject that is so far away that it's thumb-sized. I deliberately used a grainy pencil so I wouldn’t commit to rendering, as the base itself was very poor. I spent a lot of time sitting idly, looking around the room instead of working on my piece, wishing everyone would move closer to the model. By the end of the session, I felt awful and needed a morale boost, so I spent a few hours drawing from images at home. This was much more enjoyable and straightforward. I spent 40 to 55 minutes on each drawing, aiming to render them to a decent state. I tried to draw as many varied ethnic faces at different angles as possible, with different lighting scenarios.
While the drawings aren’t up to a finished piece standard, I am pleased with them because I recognize their potential.
The Eastern Asian female on the top left and the older woman in the bottom middle row are the weakest in terms of value range. In my first attempt I needed to warm up and regain my confidence so I understand the hesitation I had going too dark but the older woman has little value range because my wrist was throbbing from pressing hard to get dark values in another drawing’s hair; this affected my stroke control.
Hopefully, I will do much better next week!
Portrait - Structure & Anatomy
Portrait - Structure & Anatomy
week 2 - Assessable Piece
week 2 - Assessable Piece
(2)
I liked how it was looking here because I managed to capture the basic forms of the model's face. Despite this, however,I felt the lines where making this piece look more styalised than I intended.
(3)
I lost a lot of the form here from muddy rendering because I was rushing to get information down before I left the studio and leave my reference but this might have caused more harm than good.
(4)
got feedback on how I had squashed the bottom half of his face longatudinally, so I moved his torso lower to make space for a longer chin. Now this is probably the ugliest part of the process which was me trying to continue rendering withought the model infront of me. I wasn't liking the cartoonish-look I gave to his eyes because it lacked dimension. I also didn't like the heavy outlines drawn around his features so I was in the process of cleaning them up here (by erasing them first).
(5)
The study finally started to look good here once I erased the majority of the rendering to bring back the basic plains of the face. I used a 0.3mm mechanical pencil instead of the 0.5mm lead I was using to try and reduce this cartoonish feel. This helped a lot. I was also thinking about how I could visually push the further side of his face back to aid the illusion of three dimensionality. Perhaps having lighter shadows than the values seen in the closer shadows?
(6)
Adding shadows and shading to push and pull areas of the face but I feel like it has lost a lot of it's contrast than once seen in (5). The character was far more intreguing there but now that the features and skin are merginging due to simmilar value, the appeal is reduced.
I worked on increacing the contrast of is features to make them more intreguing and also tried grouping the shadow groups so that it is easier to dicern between the light and shadowd areas I have lost likeness here unfortunaely and I feel the eyebrows are looking too bushy and blocky.
I compared my piece to the model and felt dissatisfied with my attempt of likeness. The model's eyes aren't as open as how I drew them in (7) so here I tried to to make it look more like the model by drooping his eyes and trying to draw the eyebrows again but I was loosing the nice contrast once again.
Starting again with the features I am unhappy with. My lecturer brought to light the fact that I wasn't really paying close attention to the ear's anatomy so I wanted to work on rendering it with form in mind. I also recieved feedback on how I had drawn his eyebags a bit too defined and long. My main interest though, was getting his eyes right.
Reflection
Reflection
This was quite a challenging piece for me. I constantly struggled to make his skin tone look dark withought trying to overshadow and dominate the attention of his features. Balancing values and likeness was a challenge but I think it turned out alright.
I'm quite happy with the rendering of his features because the forms look crisp and readible. I only think the right eye (furthest) looks too fazed out because I was trying to give it
Everything from the neck and below could have been done with more care.
I want to work on improving my ability to render darker skin tones. I think darker skin tones are hard becuse you have to balance gradation in value and form for a larger area. If I practice rendering melanated skin, it will not only help with rendering skin of all types and colours, but will also translate into better rendering for all materials and spaces (such as the t-shirt here).
Portrait on Black Paper
Portrait on Black Paper
week 3 - Assessable Piece
week 3 - Assessable Piece
The paper is shiny which made it difficult to take a good picture in the studio but here I was marking the plains of the face, mostly focusing on the lit areas. I barely had to rework any of this which was good because drawing in white is a little harder to erase. The eyes and eyebrows were the only areas I had to focus on a little more (as usual). I drew his eyebrows a bit too high up his face, and his eyes too open here.
This is the result after just under 3 hours in the studio with the live model. In the image I had to bring the whites to be much brighter so they would show up nicely here. I still feel like it looks quite empty and stiff. the crosshatching is very visible so makes it a little glaring to look at. The beard is also looking two-dimensional because all of the strands are as bright as each other.
I smoothened out all the transitions in value and built better contrast to make it more exciting. I used an 8B black graphite pencil in the negative space to make the lit side of his face look brighter. I also used a white Gelly Roll pen to get highlights in. I didn't want to use pen on here because it is perminant, and the pen itself is really bad at actually laying down ink in one stroke. It's super blotchy and doesn't match the texture of the pencils but I tried my best to work with what I had since I didn't have a stronger white pencil for highlights.
Reflection
Reflection
I'm satisfied with my outcome and am particularly pleased with the rendering on his forehead. This piece was soo much easier to complete in comparison to the first assesable piece - clearly demonstarted by the difference in amount of process pictures taken. This is probably the first final piece I completed which has been done almost entirely in class.
Areas of improvement are his beard, ear, and areas in shadow. His eyes could look more dimensional but I am ok with them because of the material I was using. I could have focused on values in the beard rather than drawing strands because the long, bright strokes look strange in comparison to the faint, short ones surrounding them.
Focus on Character & Likeness
Focus on Character & Likeness
week 4 - Practice Session
week 4 - Practice Session
We had another practice session on faces but this time focusing on character and likeness. I was a little bolder with the stylisation here because it was encouraged. This study was far better than the study I did from week 1 and I drew it faster too but I still had difficulties getting the model's likeness just right. I'm still not happy with the way I drew the eyes because of how unconvincing the eyeball is sitting inbetween the eyelids but as a whole it looks entertaining if not silly :D
Portrait - Character & Likeness
Portrait - Character & Likeness
week 5 - Assessable Piece
week 5 - Assessable Piece
I really needed to draw a different angle for my last assesable piece because the last two were both three-quarter views. I had a choice bettween a front or a side profile to vary my submissions. I wanted a front facing portrait but I knew that I would have a hard time getting details and proportions right from so far away. This is because for my submission pieces, I often draw in a scale larger than life. The seats that face the front side of the model are on the other side of the room, making the reference far too small for me. I guess this reveals an issue I have with scaling and not retaining proper proportions when referencing something tiny and trying to make it fill an entire A2 page. So I decided to draw the model's side profile. I'm really glad I did because it was a lot of fun. I find that side profiles are much easier to styalise because unique facial features and proportions are more prominent than those on the front. I also liked the lighting setup here because there were clear shadows being cast from his ear and eye socket which is very different to the smoother light transitions from the first two submission pieces.
Here I was just studying the model and putting down base lines of the head. I wanted to see what I could push and what I should keep the same. I quit liked the shadows being cast by his ears so I wanted put emphasis on them a little more. Looking at the first two pictures you can see how I tilted the ear back and drew it lower too. The silhoutte of the top of the head took a few tries to get right because it is such a large area of negative space.
This part of the process was superr satisfying and calming. I worked on the shadows around the eyes, ears, and jaw first because they are the most important. I was hesitant to render the beard because I was confused with where his face ended. I also added the necklace but later regretted adding it because it felt like it dragged too much attention away from the face.
the picture on the left is how it looked by the end of the drawing session. Another quick study :D Shaded in some negative space to make his face look brighter and stand out of the page, darkened the shadows, and lightened the necklace so that it followed the flow of the piece better.
I was particularly interested in the lighting setup this side profile provided so I am happy I managed to capture the crisp shadows in my piece.
The trickiest part of this study was the area between his chin and beard. I wanted to see how his face looked beneath all that beard so that I could understand it better and portray it with more confidence. Hair was the hardest to try and replicate properly here and I still feel like it is inadequate. I know we are encouraged to render them as if they are larger forms rather than focusing on single strands but the value range could have been greater to enhance the sense of three-dimensionality and I should loose the lines dividing sections up because it looks stringy and paper-like.
I am super pleased with the rendeing on the ear and back of the head, even more so than the front, and I like the exageration of the nose. If I were to work on it for longer, I would want to improve the beard, and make the neck folds more discernible from the necklace.
Sculpting Skulls with Air dry Clay
Sculpting Skulls with Air dry Clay
week 7 -
week 7 -
I started off with a ball, smoothing it out for ages which was super satisfying. Then I split out a section to make the front area of the teeth or that 'mouth bag' including the chin. I then rolled out cylinders for cheek bones and carved faint impressions of eyesockets and a nose.
I refined the cheekbones, added to the cranium, and added the jaw and nose-bridge. I added to the head but it constantly got squished down whilst working on other areas.
The final outcome :D It looks like the skull of a silly little monkey because the philtrum area (between the nose and the mouth) looks comically large and the cranium is still a little too small. I tried to give it an expression but it could have been done better by making the brow stick out more.
This was a really fun task, getting to mess around with airdry clay for the very first time. I came into this lesson with no expectations and was fully ready to accept my silly abomination but it actually turned out pretty decent.
The cranium is smaller than realistic proportions and I could have worked on the teeth and giving it a more pronounced and confident expresssion If I was given more time but overall I was just happy to go through the process of making it :p
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