March 2, 2017 0

Pencil Portraits

By in heads, pencil, Portraits, sketches

I’m actually not fond of drawing from photos, because to me it feels too limiting. However, it’s a good way to improve the practice, and see some new aspects of anatomy, rather than simply drawing things which have worked for me before.

Here, I’ve been looking at heads as shapes in space, made up of other shapes: triangles and rectangles, and cubes, all of which have a relation to each other. I think that practice in Blender, a 3D modelling program, has been getting into my brain.

Then I go over things, trying to think about the subject’s attitude. What they are thinking and feeling. That helps keep the drawing from becoming too mechanical for me.

One thing I’ve always had trouble with is getting the eyes to line up when the head is tilted. Putting them into little boxes helps solve that. But I still have lots of little construction lines I have to erase, which is never fun.

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