all finished.

So, my passion project for this year is technically officially done! I did my final presentation this week, meaning I no longer need to work on this project. I can't say that I will continue to do as much as I have in the past few months, but I'm pretty sure that I'll keep doing some drawing occasionally.

I never did finish my second portrait project, it's not very far along so I won't bore you all with pictures of a partially completed portrait :) But, I did accomplish a lot and am happy with what I did learn. I was able to set aside time for something that I enjoyed learning about {and realized that I do quite like to learn!} and also that it's good to not just dive into a project without background information.

 I also realized that just because you have information and resources, it doesn't mean that you'll excel at something the first {or second...or third...} time that you do it. As I've said before, greatness requires practice... and practice requires discipline and the willingness to make mistakes. {Believe me, making mistakes was not enjoyable!} But if i never made some of the mistakes I did, like not measuring out proportions when drawing faces, or shading the dark lines really dark right away, I would have never learned the importance of those skills.

Overall, it's been an enjoyable and fairly productive semester. I might be back occasionally with some new projects, and possibly next year with a continuation to this "journal" :)

finishing up.

I know that I haven't posted any progress for the second portrait, but I'll do that pretty soon.

The end of the first semester is approaching, and that also means the end of my passion project work for now. We also have to do a presentation on our projects to conclude them... and that involves a bit of reflection. So this post is more about what and how I've learned throughout this project.

I started with a lot of reading and looking at other people's drawings, and tried some of it on my own sometimes. It worked better {i think} than just deciding to try draw portraits on my own. There is a lot more to drawing faces than simply copying lines... you have to consider lighting, angles, and face shape and structure. Plus, everybody has a differently structured face, so it's not like you can just draw the same outline every time.

While I was drawing child portraits, I realized that it was important to make sure that you only start drawing the features about halfway down on the face, and you can't make too many lines or smudges, 'cause that seems to add age. Their jawlines and cheekbones aren't as defined either, so the shading is a bit softer. When I was working on my first project, I realized that it is also pretty important to measure out the features and where they are on the face. When I just tried to guess approximately what the proportions were, the sketch turned out a bit far from the actual image.

I also had to start scheduling specific days to work on my project {like Tuesdays and sometimes Thursdays} so that I'd actually get it done. :) Otherwise, other things would take priority. Hopefully, I'll still have time to work on this "hobby" {for lack of a better word} even though the semester is ending.

next "project."

My next attempt will be with drawing this portrait below, which looks pretty simple... yet i know it'll be a bit more than simple, especially because of the fact that it has a more fine style than the portrait of the boy.

It is an adult face, meaning the shape is different than previous sketches. What makes it a bit easier is that it's straight-on view, so there's no need to factor in the lighting and angle complications. I'll probably start it, but then finish my other one at some point too :) My progress should be fairly quick since it's Christmas break and this is a way to get rid of dullness and boredom and gives me something useful to do. 

We'll see, though ;)

young boy portrait - part three.

So by now i'm almost finished with this picture and am going to start moving on to a new one very soon. Before that, though, I need to finish this portrait...

There's still a couple things that i want to finish on it. This time, i shaded some more things darker, including the eyes. I worked on the hair a bit, but that got to be really challenging because there are lights and darks, but it cannot look random... so there has to be definition, but if there is too much then it looks like straw hair. I also had to change the hair line a bit because it was going to far over the boy's forehead. Also, I think i finally got the face shape really similar to the actual picture, which I was very happy about. {That took a lot of measuring with the end of my pencil, and much erasing!}

One thing that you'll notice looking at the original is that there are some very prominent shading/shadow lines under the eyes, which I tried to work on as well. It's difficult because I didn't want it to look overly shaded and with a child's face you don't want too much shading because it makes the skin look a bit older. However, there is some obvious definition, which takes a gentle buildup of sketching.

The picture isn't the best quality, but that's because of the size of my scanner compared to the sketchpad - it lets some light in. All that being said, for a first full-page project, I think that it's looking fairly good :)

young boy portrait - part two.

So i spent a few hours one evening working on my project picture, and I'm quite happy {and surprised} to say that it's going pretty well. There are some things that I still need to work on, and the face shape still isn't quite right {very very very difficult to get that similar to the picture, especially because my image is a larger scale of it.} Here's how it looks right now, compared to the original.

As you can see, I shaded the eyes a bit more and defined more of the hair. The nose and mouth and lines are also more defined. Next time I'm going to work on the hair the most, as well as fixing up some details. I also think that the space between the nose and mouth is a little less than it should be, so I might very possibly change that next time :)
I have found that I enjoy working on this project, but once I have drawn for an hour or two, I need to stop before I make unnecessary changes and get frustrated!
Any suggestions?

getting ideas and help :)

... i have found Pinterest to be pretty helpful to find ideas, inspirations and tips throughout the course of my project so far, so i joined the site to save some of the stuff that i found useful and to help me get some more ideas and help :)

the link to the board on pinterest is here, and also on my inspirations page.

idea board.

young boy portrait - part one.

So I started the work on my first {official} project, and I realized that it's going to be a bit more work than I thought... I thought I might just be able to freehand the face shape and guess as to where the features and such are positioned. That didn't turn out too well for me {as you can see in image two... not really my proudest artwork I must admit!} :) The picture printed actually is about half of a page, while what I'm drawing is a full page of sketching paper, meaning that I can't just "cheat" and trace it or something like that...

Here is what I began by doing {it looked good at that point, i thought} (:

But when it came to doing the features, it didn't work so well to just try best to guess/sketch it. I ended up having to erase a lot of what I did at first because the proportions weren't exactly right... as you can see in the next picture :P

I had to use my pencil and measure the size of the distances from the mouth to cheek, nose to eyes, eyes to side of the face... etc. I also started shading too early {which is why the mouth and the eyes did not turn out very well!} I learned that it is much better to do light outlines before you start working the shading too much, otherwise you have nowhere to go when you finish, and it's better to build up your dark/medium tones as opposed to going with them right away. I made this mistake with the boy's mouth.. shading the middle but not the rest.
I worked on the picture a bit more and it did end up much better than image two {but then I got so sick of it and decided to stop at that point.} However, I forgot to take a picture but I'll include that in the next post. Maybe I'll do a quick sketch in the meantime before coming back to that picture on Monday or Tuesday :)