Here's my line drawing to my newest piece. This portrait is going to be of my beautiful baby girl Yorkie, Bella. She's 4 years old and has quite the little personality and I love her so much. She just shows me those puppy dog eyes of hers and she makes me melt. I hope to capture her in a graphite portrait which is going to be a Christmas gift for my wife. Christmas is only 14 days away so I better get crackin' on this.
This is 11 x 14 Canson Bristol Smooth paper (the paper is actually two side, smooth on one side and more of a vellum surface on the other - for this I'm using the smooth side). The line drawing was used with a 0.5 mechanical pencil with a 2B lead.
I call this phase of my drawing process the "ugly" phase because my line drawing looks, well; ugly. The lines were quickly laid down and looks like a 2 year old could have done a better job. I use my line drawing for placement of features only, sort of like a map. I just want to block everything in and get the shape of Bella's head down on paper. Once I have everything mapped out and placed where I want them, I can now start to add texture, tone, and depth to Bella to hopefully bring her to life on paper.
I will be blogging my process from start to finish. This is only the second time I am drawing a dog so this should be interesting. I hope you enjoy watching.
 |
| Bella WIP 1 |
Here is the reference photo I am using. I will also be drawing from life as well. I do not want to copy the reference photo exactly. I will be changing some things as I go along. I want to capture Bella's personality which isn't really something the camera picked up.
 |
| reference photo (color) |
The way I handle reference photos is that I take the photo and upload it to my computer where I open it in Photoshop. Because I use graphite, I change the color of the photo from color to grayscale so that I can see the black/white/gray tones.
 |
| reference photo in grayscale |
I primarily use graphite because I just love it. I think graphite and charcoal really makes an impact. I think the drawing is more dramatic in graphite. More to come soon!!!
