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Work in Progress: Portrait Drawing |
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| I have just started a new portrait. The lady is deceased and her husband only had a poor quality photograph. I have a lot of experience of doing this kind of portrait, and the families tell me that I get good results. Now that I have a computer, I start by scanning the photograph and working on it in Photoshop until I have got the best detail that I can. I print out a worksheet with the selected photo and a selection of other photos. I enlarge a copy to the size of the finished portrait and print that out. The quality at that size is not usually good enough to work from, but it helps in getting the proportions right. Judging proportions from a 6 x 4 inch photo is painful. Next, using Photoshop and on a new layer, I "draw" a line through the corners of the eyes and extend it across the image. I duplicate the line layer many times and move the lines up and down to coincide with the features such as the mouth, nostrils, chin, hairline and neckline. Then I rotate a line 90º and repeat for important verticals. I print that out and a version of the lines on thin paper. I use soft pencil on the back of the thin paper to copy the lines onto the drawing paper. I only started using this method a couple of years ago because my disability makes it very hard for me to judge angles. Polio made one side of my body shorter than the other which means I stand/sit at an angle which varies according to how tired I am. Drawing the lines through the features means that I get the head at the right angle. I tried ordinary squaring up a picture many years ago but it didn't work. It was too hard to see mistakes. I tended to believe that because I'd squared up I must have drawn it correctly. I got some horrendous results and gave it up quickly. No. My problem isn't with proportions: it is with angles. I am using Derwent Drawing Pencils. I like the square ones (like carpenters' pencils) but I don't think they make them any more. They still make the round ones. They come in 6 colours and give a similar effect to Conté but they are waxy and more resistant to smudging. Below I show the portrait after 4 hours. Initially I work in vertical stripes because I use a piece of clear acetate over the right hand side of the paper to rest my hand against. I can't hold my hand steady otherwise. The drawing needs protection from smudging but also from grease and acids off my skin. I erase the construction lines as I go before I do any serious drawing. |
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| Alba is no longer a work in progress. I was going to finish it at the Ruhm Gallery, Penrith, on Wednesday afternoons, but when I set it up on the easel there I realised that there were faults in the drawing that I couldn't fix because I had painted black pastel in areas that should be light in colour. As anyone who has read my tips page will realise, that meant that I could not erase it because the paper would be permanently stained. It was a small area by his left ear (on the right), but it was so annoying to me that I destroyed the painting. I will restart it one day, and do a much better job of it. I have left the tips pages, as they are still valid | |||||||||
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