Another week of following Lee Hammond's advice in her book, "The Big Book of Drawing." This week focused on several different hair-styles, much to my pleasure. Drawing hair, and having it turn out well, is a real good feeling. Let's take a look.
First we have a cool pony-tail. This was my first and best attempt at hair. It took a long time but never felt difficult. Just lots and lots of lines, then drawing over those lines with more lines, and then 15-min later you have the one section done. Highlights are getting better. I drew a fairly good face as well, but my ear somehow ended up flipped the wrong way. Weird.
The bottom hair-style is supposed to be wavy/curly, but it mostly looks like a mess. I'll admit that I rushed this one. Part of the reason is that Hammond's step-by-step approach starts slacking off at this point in the book. Paraphrased: Step one, draw the outline. Step two, do a bit of shading. Step three, everything's magically done. As is, you need to approach each wave as a small, separate entity, and when you complete them all everything will fall into place. I lacked patience or something, and the rest is, um, I don't know what. I do like the highlights at the top, though. Yeah for some positives!
More hair! This is perhaps my personal favourite, straight hair, the kind that flows in the wind so nicely. It turned out okay, but I know what I did wrong. The middle section, the anti-highlight as it were, doesn't curve in the same direction as the bottom-part, spoiling some of the effect. I should have turned the paper around, allowing the natural curve of the wrist to flow in the proper direction. Oh well, still decent.
The bottom one is your standard office haircut, I guess, parted off to one side. Again, the instructions basically amounted to, "Draw an outline and let your innate artistic talent do the rest." Notice that the ear is much better this time! The left side feels a little flat. The right side is better, though the front feels much thinner compared to her final output. On the plus-side, I think my highlights are the best I've ever done. I'll accept that.
Here's my portrait this week! Can you guess who it is? If you can, then I must have done a good job. I'll give you a moment to look it over. Here's a hint: it's George Washington. I only finished this a few hours ago, so my thoughts won't likely be the most objective, but here goes.
It does mostly look like Mr Washington, though I don't know how or why. This was a much harder drawing than the girl from last week, which kind of shows, but it was also a challenge I mostly met. Eyes were hard again, but even though the one eye looks off in a slightly different direction I'm happy. I actually really like the left one. The nose, oddly, I struggled with the most. I was never fully happy with it, but I had done too much of the rest of the face to alter it, and I didn't want to start completely over. The face is a little too round and the chin is a little too short, but these are relatively minor.
Took three days, at about five hours total, give or take. The clothing was a last minute decision, and I'm happy I drew it: only took about 15min, and it looks much better than just a floating head on paper. Lastly, look at the bottom corner: I've updated my art signature. It's now a JZ intertwined, with the 'roof' of the 'J' doubling as the 'roof' of the 'Z'. I think it's clever.
This just about wraps up the portrait section of the 'Big Book of Drawing', which is good. I'm thrilled at my progress, but faces every day for a month is starting to get a little dull. I may or may not do one more portrait, and then it's onto animals! Yeah! Even if not, I'll just skip to the animal section. I think this is the longest I've gone without drawing a cat, and that needs to be rectified.
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