This was a project I started at the very beginning of Foundation. The visual quality doesn't match that of my current work, but it was a fairly long project, so I'm giving it a chance to shine.
These are a series of photos taken throughout the development of this piece to show the progression and development of it. The photo is of my friend that I took. There is nothing special about the photo, it is a portrait photo, the angle isn't heavily distorted and the lighting is fairly standard. I wanted to get as much light on the face as I could all to add to the beauty and life to contrast the acrylic I would put over it, softness vs rigidity.
When drawing a portrait, I always start on the eyes, finding the right shape and size and with this I can create a rough outline of where the other facial features should be. I start working on one eye to get the right tones and depth of the rest of the face and put in a rough nose and mouth (it's still just construction lines at this point). I try to think of portraiture as building a house. You start with the scaffolding and the foundations (construction lines) from there it's and layering, tone on top of tone and all the little intricacies are like the decor and what you put in the house once you've finished building. With this mindset, I build the layers of tone on top of each other, using fairly soft charcoal that won't darken the face too much but dark enough to create shadows in the face. In the very early stages of a portrait it's very hard to be happy with your work as you can't truly see what you've created until the end, however, I managed to see the resemblance between my work and the picture.
I try to construct the eyes, nose and mouth first (as I previously said) so get a sense of the tones. Once I know how dark, or light, I need to go I slowly build on that adding the face outlines as light as possible but dark enough so they give me a box to work in.
I've attempted to focus more on hair in my more recent portraits as this was always a big weakness for me and working on it as I work through the rest of the face really helps as this way I'm not putting it off until the end at which point I would just leave it. Different mediums require different techniques with hair but so far I've found charcoal to be the easiest as you can create a very rough outline and apply the charcoal and from then it's more a process of taking the charcoal off rather than putting in on. You still need to add certain strands but this way it gives it a musty and illusive feel that doesn't have to be accurate because when done right, it still looks like hair and with charcoal, you don't have to follow it strand for strand. I use vine charcoal for the hair as it is usually easy to take off and once I'm happy with the overall structure and I've rubbed out the necessary sections, I can then apply the harder, darker charcoal.
Additionally, I find the face shape can be quite hard to get right as the picture might not be straight on and it therefore distorts the face a little which means the face shape isn't always as it looks. For me, this is just a case of trial and error until i get it right. Measuring it against the eyes and the nose helps as it can give you a rough idea about where it should be.
The composition before the acrylic was added was actually quite accurate and I was surprised about the outcome of the hair and the realism of it. I'd been able to get the highlights correct which really adds depth and life. The main feature I thought were the freckles on her face, they're just so defining. This added a whole other level of detail which took a lot of time but it paid off. It was simply doing little circles with a soft charcoal pencil that gave a realistic look to it and added character.
THE ADDITION OF THE ACRYLIC INTO MY FINAL
I don't know how I feel about the addition of the acrylic. It brings texture and depth to it and adds more life however, it takes away from the portrait which was my aim when you read the meaning.
Some early experiments for the composition
These are a series of photos taken throughout the development of this piece to show the progression and development of it. The photo is of my friend that I took. There is nothing special about the photo, it is a portrait photo, the angle isn't heavily distorted and the lighting is fairly standard. I wanted to get as much light on the face as I could all to add to the beauty and life to contrast the acrylic I would put over it, softness vs rigidity.
When drawing a portrait, I always start on the eyes, finding the right shape and size and with this I can create a rough outline of where the other facial features should be. I start working on one eye to get the right tones and depth of the rest of the face and put in a rough nose and mouth (it's still just construction lines at this point). I try to think of portraiture as building a house. You start with the scaffolding and the foundations (construction lines) from there it's and layering, tone on top of tone and all the little intricacies are like the decor and what you put in the house once you've finished building. With this mindset, I build the layers of tone on top of each other, using fairly soft charcoal that won't darken the face too much but dark enough to create shadows in the face. In the very early stages of a portrait it's very hard to be happy with your work as you can't truly see what you've created until the end, however, I managed to see the resemblance between my work and the picture.I try to construct the eyes, nose and mouth first (as I previously said) so get a sense of the tones. Once I know how dark, or light, I need to go I slowly build on that adding the face outlines as light as possible but dark enough so they give me a box to work in.
I've attempted to focus more on hair in my more recent portraits as this was always a big weakness for me and working on it as I work through the rest of the face really helps as this way I'm not putting it off until the end at which point I would just leave it. Different mediums require different techniques with hair but so far I've found charcoal to be the easiest as you can create a very rough outline and apply the charcoal and from then it's more a process of taking the charcoal off rather than putting in on. You still need to add certain strands but this way it gives it a musty and illusive feel that doesn't have to be accurate because when done right, it still looks like hair and with charcoal, you don't have to follow it strand for strand. I use vine charcoal for the hair as it is usually easy to take off and once I'm happy with the overall structure and I've rubbed out the necessary sections, I can then apply the harder, darker charcoal.
Additionally, I find the face shape can be quite hard to get right as the picture might not be straight on and it therefore distorts the face a little which means the face shape isn't always as it looks. For me, this is just a case of trial and error until i get it right. Measuring it against the eyes and the nose helps as it can give you a rough idea about where it should be.The composition before the acrylic was added was actually quite accurate and I was surprised about the outcome of the hair and the realism of it. I'd been able to get the highlights correct which really adds depth and life. The main feature I thought were the freckles on her face, they're just so defining. This added a whole other level of detail which took a lot of time but it paid off. It was simply doing little circles with a soft charcoal pencil that gave a realistic look to it and added character.
THE ADDITION OF THE ACRYLIC INTO MY FINAL
I don't know how I feel about the addition of the acrylic. It brings texture and depth to it and adds more life however, it takes away from the portrait which was my aim when you read the meaning.
THE ORIGINAL IDEAS AND EXPERIMENTS FOR "DISTORTION"
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