I only drew one picture this week. Does that make me a bad person? Hardly. I decided to do one more portrait from Hammond's 'Big Book of Drawing.' Little did I know that it would eat away nearly ten hours of my life. Were those hours wasted? I'll let you be the judge.
I think I say this every week, but this is the best thing I've ever drawn. Ever. Do you know who this is? He's a former President and, according to a movie, an even better vampire slayer. It's Honest Abe Lincoln. Or at least his head. After ten hours, I wasn't about to start drawing his neck and shoulders. I think it looks fine as is.
True story: this didn't look like Lincoln for the first five or so hours. That got me scared. I did the outline and the eyes, and it looked like a really young person. I did the nose and the mouth, still a really young person. Adding the beard made it a young person with an unusually scruffy beard. I began to despair. Maybe I really had wasted a week. Then I lightly shaded his cheeks and Mr Lincoln suddenly appeared before me.
Talk about a eureka moment.
I could barely believe it. The light, minimal shading around the cheeks turned this from a collection of facial features into a real, recognizable person. It was so stunning, so instant, I didn't touch his cheeks again. I tried to touch everything else up, but the cheeks I left alone. This means his one nostril remained rather small, but I'll take it.
I'm so pleased with this I've uploaded it to my account on Deviant Art, which will basically serve as the Hall of Fame for my Hall of Fame, the best of the best.
And with that, good-bye portraits, see ya faces. In a couple weeks I might try again, but not for awhile. People are not my passion. I want to draw animals, and dragons, and fantasy creations, and maybe landscapes ... people and portraits rank fairly low on the totem pole. Nest week (more like all of next month), I'll get started on that.
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