I’m having fun renewing my acquaintance with sketching. Just a few pencil strokes can shade more effectively than spending lots of time carefully perfecting dark-to-light gradients. Now, my challenge is to tighten up on the spatial relationships among facial features. If you look back on other quarantine self portraits in this series, you can see […]
I looked carefully at one of Cézanne’s sketches of his son. I think he sketched the shapes that made up the face, not facial features. This is a different way of sketching, a different way of seeing. We’ll see how it goes.
I have difficulty with portraits where the subject is only partially facing me. Most of the features on the far side of the face are hidden, and must be rendered as isolated lumps or bumps, with no visible connection to those which are visible.
I broke the routine today, and put on my photographer’s cap, to design the self portrait below. Placement of the image adds to the mood of the photograph, or in this case, the sketch. The way I framed today’s self portrait gives the image a claustrophobic feeling. This is a good way to convey the […]
Most (if not all) of my quarantine self portraits have used a photo booth (app) photograph as reference for my sketch. Today I flipped the camera to selfie mode to take the reference picture. The resolution was much higher and I could zoom in for a close look at details. One can tell from the […]
Quarantine has limited my range of subjects to sketch (mostly me). To compensate, I have been sketching photos of myself, taken from different vantage points, to try capturing facial features seen from a variety of angles, through shading and attending to relative proportions. I’m sure I can apply the lessons I learn from these exercises […]
I was leaning over for this study. I wanted to try drawing my neck (such as it is). However, what commanded my interest more was the half of my face in silhouette and the rim of my glasses that caught the light.
I am looking forward to trying my ‘facial feature proximity’ technique on live subjects instead of my photo, when shelter in place is over. It was a bit counterintuitive, when I noticed that my right nostril was really close to my right eye. It was even closer in the photo. The lesson I take […]
Brotherly Love 