New Views

                                           Book's Reference Photo

Face to Face

Seeing as this may be my last post I wanted to not only put in my last efforts to try and create at least an outline of a portrait, but an animal drawing as well. As seen in the photos I started off from a picture of a woman with a layered grid atop the photo. Using a grid did make it easier for me to draw the picture in different parts. It also allow me to be able to not be too overwhelmed by the picture's entire layout. Though the grid did make this whole process a lot easier, I still did find trying to capture the likeness of the photo onto the paper to be quite a challenge. I found it really frustrating to convince myself that I hadn't totally messed up the photo but as I drew in the lines and read the book (Lee Hammond's Big Book of Drawing) I saw it read "I know it looks funny (with the grid lines), but it helps keep things in the right place. Take your time and strive for accuracy." (Hammond 49). So from that helpful advice I continued to finish my outline but I didn't think I was ready to start filling it in just yet.

Seal of Approval

Since I didn't go further on my portrait drawing I decided to take a break from people and promote myself to start drawing animals. In my book when it comes to good animal drawings it states "The trick is using the dark areas and light areas together to create shape and blending to create realism." (Hammond 70). So basically when going about this it's best to know what shapes you're working with when drawing a certain animal and identifying the lighter and darker areas to achieve effective realism.

Seal Drawing

Towards the right you see my first drawing of an animal which happens to be a seal. I really enjoyed drawing such a cute and adored animal, but that wasn't necessarily the only reason I started with it. I believe the book starts out with this specific animal in order to get the reader better accustomed to learning how to shade animals. With this animal especially, it's an essential component to make it look real. Though I am now working with drawing an animal, similar components of drawing people still come into play like with the shaping of eyes and shading.

Closing

It was really interesting to not only attempt my first real portrait while trying to learn and apply the realism techniques I've learned. I also really found a joy in drawing animals which I look forward to continuing in the future. My question to you is if there was anything that you would be willing to learn to draw realistically, and what would keep you motivated to keep trying even if it didn't come out right the first few times? Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment below about any questions or critiques that you have, all of it is welcome!

 Hammond, Poly Lee. Lee Hammond's Big Book of Drawing. First ed. Cincinnati, OH: North Light, 2004. Print.