This is where it starts getting exciting. All of the outlining seems worth it now.
From the start I'm using a combination of HB and 2B to shade, getting the correct amount of dark in the hair.
I'm shading from left to right, so as not to smudge any of the graphite as I go. I do, however, always have a small piece of paper that my hand rests on when outlining or shading, to keep the paper clean. I never touch the paper with my fingers or my hand, as the natural oils in the skin can make it difficult to rub off graphite the paper.
Woo hoo!
At this stage I can't rush ahead and begin shading. Just because the outline looks complete, I need to go over it with a fine toothed comb to double check that every is in place and ready to go. This doesn't take too long, and we should see some progress in the shading side of things very shortly.
This portrait is going to be awesome.
Getting there.
Cara-Jane just came up and said, "Dad, is that hard?" The answer was that no, it isn't any harder than drawing the eye or shading the hair, it just takes longer.
I find that so odd. When you see the finished product, a cheek tone looks so much 'easier' than an ear or a braid of hair, but there is no difference. In fact, sometime skin tones take much longer to get to the right shade.
Here's a close up of the detail in the shirt.
Click on the image to get a further zoomed in view.
It's been a while since I've drawn and it's really time to get back into it. My goal was to have all four daughters done by Christmas, but I probably won't even get two done. That's alright though. Keep ploughing on.
You can see in this scan the density and complexity of the floral shirt. There's not a predictable pattern to it, and not much uniformity in terms of size of flowers or length of stems.
This makes it a painstaking process of measuring, cross-referencing and checking to make sure it looks how its meant to.
I'm really looking forward to the shading of this picture, but I know that there are a few more hours to go until I get to that stage. Hang in there!
