I have always liked to draw faces, but the faces I draw without references tend to be very samey samey after a while. Oh look a side view, how dull, how direct. While they are fun to do I needed to challenge myself. Like these ones….
I got hold of some old 1940s and 1950s knitwear pattern books that someone was chucking out because I really liked the pictures in them. Lots of posed, elegant ladies. With really interesting lighting effects and shading. fascinating, in fact, stuff that you can’t do on your own. One day while noodling around I got out a small brush and some ink and started just doing very rough copies of them.
The next few I just decided to do as drawings, initially with a pen and then I started shading in with pencil. I didn’t erase any lines in these, was just drawing them out in one go, so they are somewhat wonky. The shading was interesting because often the entire face would be in shadow, or much of it, not something I’ve done very often.
Most things I do are somewhat wonky, hope you’ve picked that by now.
So from here I’ve decided to be a bit more careful and try to sketch it out first to get angles and proportions right. It doesn’t always work – this lady’s legs are not great, but her upper half I like:
I spent probably longer on this one than on the rest together, and I got all excited about new drawing pencils. Actually bought a professional set. I also liked that the hat was called ‘Avril’. Like, woah. IT HAS MY NAME NOTHING HAS MY NAME.
I’m doing more of these, these are fun. Also good to work on getting fabric texture just in monochrome pencil.
