Derwent Coloursofts. Approximately 1 hour.

No tutorials. Photograph on Flickr.

Getting better.

Paper: Canson sketch, 50lb, 3.5″ x 5.5″
Pencils: 3B, 2B, HB, B, H, 4H
Tools: Tortillion, kneaded eraser
Time: 1 hour +
Tutorial: Stars Portraits: A crap site, but an excellent tutorial
So, what did I do differently from the other day? I took my time, and I paid close attention to what I was seeing. That’s it.

Next go. I ignored the tutorial this time, which is why it’s better than yesterday. (It is a different eye.)

I also learned from my mistakes – I didn’t attempt to draw the highlight like a little square, thus avoiding what a currently unknown but rather opinionated Art Critic described as, “A window into the soul.”

Here’s the big version – closer to actual size.

Most egregious mistakes were, of course, the last elements drawn: Shadow on the eyeball above the iris, and shadow above the eye.

I didn’t follow a tutorial. Took about 45 minutes.

Quick sketch. About 45 minutes. Mostly 3B. Some 4H, HB, B, and 5B. Using a circular motion and a blender to try and get a soft skin affect.

Complete shite. But you have to start somewhere.

Tutorial used: The Artwork of Brian Duey: How to draw a realistic eye
It’s a good tutorial – I can’t blame him.

Couple more hours work and ta-da: The Final Frog. Actual size 8″x10″. I did not erase the grid lines before the final darkening of the colours – I guess I’ll remember next time.

And here he is, super small size. Which was part of the reason for doing this drawing – do it large, then scale it down to see how it looks small. So, here’s how he looks:

Work in progress. You can just make out the grid. Prismacolour. On drawing stock. Outlined using coloured pencils, then the lighter yellows and greens were blocked in. Then the cream colour (his lips, mostly). Then darker greens. Then black. About two hours to get this far. Close to actual size.

Derwent Coloursoft pencils. About two hours. Grid drawn from a photo reference. Scanned at 48-bit. No level adjustments in Photoshop.

Dendrobates azureus

Here is the same with a background. Shadows are – I now see – not finished. Oops.

An accidental sketch – saw the photo and started to rough it out, then 45 minutes later I found I was done. Gorgeous photo on Flickr. He’s a rusty red color, with a touch of black around his lips.

The scan was 48-bit color, with the image subsequently converted to grayscale in Photoshop, which got rid of the “blueness” of the original RGB scan while retaining the fidelity.

Various hands – all done with a B. Paper/size as usual for the last few posts. It is excruciating to do them small. If I block off a small area and try to draw inside it, I end up with a fingernail and nothing else.

That lower left corner sketch was meant to be the whole hand plus some wrist – but I just… couldn’t… do it. So the really small one to its right was done as punishment.

Notice how it’s not “Macbeth” or “Macbeth, 1971”, or (more importantly) “Finch’s Macbeth”. It’s “Polanski’s Macbeth”, the film bankrolled by Hugh Hefner.

Banquo (Martin Shaw) on the left, and Macbeth (Jon Finch) on the right.

The original sketch is another 6″x4″ on el-cheapo paper. Mostly done with an F and 4H.

This is a black and white scan of the image.

And this is an RGB scan of the image. I wanted to test out an RGB of a grayscale image.

There’s more fidelity on the RGB – of course, it’s a 48-bit scan versus 24 for the grayscale (highest my Epson 4490 does for grayscale).

Lina Romay. Spanish girl, star of such luminous masterpieces as “Female Vampire”. I did a few freehand sketches of her and just couldn’t get her face right, hence the grid. Done with an 0.5mm 2B on very cheap paper with no tooth. About 60 minutes.

There is a curious story behind the image. I was on Flickr, trawling through, and came across the photo of Romay. I’d never heard of her before, so I Googled the name. And discovered she had died that day (December 27th). Only it wasn’t her. The gal I’ve sketched took “Lina Romay” as a stage name from a much older actress who was a singer back in Fred Astaire films etc of the 1940s, and it was the older actress that had died, aged 91.

I managed to make Bono look up-himself: quite an achievement (ha ha). Also, a random archer; almost as fun to sketch as horses (my two favourite things, for some reason). And a very quick sketch of the lead singer from Rammstein, with his burning angel wings apparatus; did this to try and capture the weight of the wings.

Random cats. Shadow of the silhouette was a challenge – the darkest dark is not at the limb/edge, but offset slightly from it, and it’s not uniform.

Grid cat one. Done without grid, then with the grid overlaid to repair. I was not close on nose, eyes, and mouth. Note the eyes especially – the real width was double what I had.

Grid cat two. This little guy took about 90 minutes. Graphite – B, F, H, 4H. All with the grid. I darkened the shadow in the window to make him stand out more – could have gone darker. Actual size 6″x4″ (on my laptop screen it’s almost the actual size).

Almost all of the following was done with my GraphGear 0.5, 2B. Paper is a small (approximately 3″ x 6″) cheap pad, worth about 50 cents – rubbish quality but who cares?

First up: A lousy take on David Puddy – “This is bogus, man!” The chick from one of Lange’s seminal visual-documentary photos of the depression – although, I found out the story told by Lange is hardly credible, given the family are mostly still alive to refute the photographer’s claims. And a quicky of Rae Dawn Chong – because, let’s face it, she’s gorgeous even when covered in war paint (you probably can’t tell that from my sketch…)

Second up: Street children from various places around the world. The third is a poor sketch of a Chinese beggar child – the first sketch I did of all this lot, which is probably why it’s a little more cartoonish.

Third set: Two girls barracking for Germany at the South African world cup. One photographed early in the tournament, the other obviously much later (ha ha). A skull copied from the awesome Justin Sweet. And a tyke from Arkansas, from the depression, sitting in his raggedy clothes on the porch of the family farmhouse. I couldn’t capture his smile – one of those, “Aint life grand!” smiles because he’d never experienced anything different than poverty, and hadn’t been taught to be ashamed of it.

Fourth up: Two beggar children and a gypsy child. My favorite set.

Fifth up: Two beggar girls. One had hope the other didn’t – hopefully you can tell which is which.

Last Monday 15th November, 2010 was the end of the Georgian era. Here are two of the last sketches I did of the old bugger.

A quick sketch of George done in crayon. He was NOT a good model – he kept moving his head. Picture was pretty much life-sized, on builder’s heavy brown paper.

And one of my infamous Preying Mantis George masterpieces. Part dog. Part preying mantis. All devil dog. “I’m a baad dog.”

Rest in peace, little buddy.

CarbOthello practice. After John Busby.

Two birds done with the Stabilo CarbOthello pencil crayons. The left chough is after John Busby. The big black chough is from a photo.

Gary Franceschini

The chihuahua from that famous photo taken in New York some time ago, you know the one.

Some sketching practice. Timothy Leary (center), some dude (left), and a couple of morels. Hardtmuth 0.5mm 2B

Strangely enough, Leary looks blurry and out of focus. Appropriate, I suppose.

Gary Franceschini