Hi everyone, today I would be showing my drawing process of Mr Jerry Banfield. He has been a great inspiration to me on this platform. When I first discovered this platform it was quite difficult to make sense of it. Watching @Jerrybanfield videos helped me a lot (comment below how @Jerrybanfield has helped your steemit experience). He also has been a great help to the steemit platform reinvesting and building the community and I thank him for that.
In this post I will go through my general approach to drawing portraits, read till the end and I guarantee you'll learn a thing or two ;-)
Tools and supplies
This was a graphite X charcoal drawing. I did most of the portrait with graphite but I rendered the background with a willow stick. 2B and **8B ** seemed fairly okay for the drawing. 2B for the outline and rough sketch. It also helped in some light tones. 8B was used mainly for shading. This could be altered based on your preferences, any grade of pencils will do.
Blending stump and kneaded eraser for controlling the charcoal.
Music
This portrait took about 2 hours to complete.... I think (I lost count of time) . That was a long time except I had music to while the time. When doing long drawings or projects, listening to musics and audio books isn't a bad idea. I don't believe drawing in total silence helps. Though be careful the selection, Classical music works just fine.
The process
Drawing the outline
First thing to do when drawing a portrait involves drawing the general outlines and proportions to scale. This is what the entire drawing is based on. I like spending some time here measuring the distance from one point to the other to get a likeness with the reference I am using. Do this till you feel somewhat satisfied with the way it looks. But don't be quick to start adding details where not necessary.
Drawing the planes
With the outline as a guide, I start drawing the planes of the face. The face has planes as a complex form. During this stage, facial features like the eyes, I lightly indicate. This is when the likeness starts to show.
Drawing each facial feature is like sculpting a form. Drawing them this way will make the drawing pop out and easier to shade as a 3 dimensional form.
Two values stage
When shading I think about the values as just two tones, the light and the Shadows. All the highlights and light tones form the light, and all in shadow form the shadow tone. Doing this help simplify the shading making it less complicated. The shadow area would later carry darker values as where required. The light could carry a middle tone value. All based on how light illuminate the the face.
Features
The individual facial features give a person his distinct look. I handle each feature specifically like I discussed in my previous posts on how to render the facial features, check that out for more on that. I had to make a few adjustments with somethings here and there but it turned out great.
Blending
Blending the tone of the face I used a blending stump, custom made. I also used my finger here and there. As I was blending I payed attention to the highlight and the midtone values not to loose them.
I started filling in the background with charcoal willow blending the face into the background leaving a sharp contrast on the face to draw attention to the face from the back ground. Lost edges are cool when used properly. I lost some of @Jerrybanfield hair and neck to the background.
And it was a little bit messy ....
Final thoughts
I didn't quite go in depth to shading and all the other fun stuff, I plan on doing that in future posts so don't forget to follow. Comment below your thoughts and what you would like to see next. Most of all it was a fun drawing @Jerrybanfield and I hopes he likes it.
Thanks for reading, an upvote and a comment will be appreciated, follow for more. Stay blessed.
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