Basic head drawing

[Brittney Bach]

[Brittney Bach]

[Leo DiFraia]

Hi Brittney,

First thing I would say is you’ve drawn two real people. By that I mean that somehow, without looking at your reference, I know you’ve captured their likeness. Well done.

If that was easy for you then you might start to consider using stronger values and improving your mark-making.

Right now, the outline seems to be what the drawings are focused on but the line itself isn’t varied or interesting enough to capture our imagination. It is often blurry and thick meaning you’ve gone over it multiple times. If you need to, start out light and keep your drawing light until you’re ready to make some bold marks.

The other suggestion is to darken your shadows. They seem very tentative at this point. There should be a strong difference between your light halftones and your shadow values.

It might help too to photograph your drawings and then edit the photo so that your paper looks white not gray/brown.

I hope that helps.

Leo

[Brittney Bach]

So I should lighten my outlines and darken the shadows?

[Leo DiFraia]

At this point, I would just darken the shadows.

In future drawings, I would keep my outlines very light until I knew for certain where they needed to be and then, I would work on creating thick/thin, sharp/soft, light/dark lines. Lines that are bold, confident and varied to create interest.

I would recommend looking at some portrait drawings by John Singer Sargent.

[Author]

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