Drawing Unknown Faces, part 17

What do you do if you are a proud father and want to show your child to friends and family? Well, you let someone take a photo, put it on Flickr, and tell anyone you think should know where to find it, or you put that image (still hosted by Flickr) on your blog. Much better than attaching photos to emails.

I needed 30 minutes for this drawing, especially because the father’s face was so hard to draw. He does not have the same expression and likeness as on the photo.

The sketch was based on a photo grabbed from the public Flickr photo stream.

That is all.

Drawing Unknown Faces, part 13

This was such a lovely scene with mother and child, I couldn’t not draw it.

I started with the mouth of the child, because it was clearly the hardest shape to draw. Only now I realize, it is not placed perfectly in her face.

Drawing children seems to be hard. Their proportions differ depending on their age, and even two children of the same age can have different proportions in their faces, because the development of the bones, muscles, etc. have taken a slightly different path.

The sketch is based on a photo of the Flickr public timeline.

That is all.

Drawing Unknown Faces, part 12

While looking at the photo, the only thing I could think of for half of time it took to make this sketch was what a proud father that must be!

Perhaps it was this distraction that made it so hard. I had worked for 40 minutes and saw the head of the father was too small (the daughter couldn’t reach his face). So I had to erase most of the sketch and start all over. Of course, in the next 40 minutes I knew what to do, and didn’t have much thoughts, other than where to draw my lines.

I guess you need to remain objective about your drawing while drawing. Once you start to think about it, things can go awry in your drawing.

All was not lost though, because the second time around I could both capture the expression of the father and the daughter exactly, well for 95 percent.

As an aside, I think the advantage of the pencil is that its markings can be erased if you’re not happy with the result. It is a feature, not a flaw. You should use it sparingly, though, because in my experience, if you use it while drawing, it distracts from the flow of drawing. It’s better to draw extra lines on top of the existing lines, and erase the “wrong lines” later. Or not. The extra lines give a sketch more body, more volume.

The photo was graciously shared to the world through the Flickr public timeline. I don’t know who the people in the photo are.

That is all.