Drawing "The Gaze"

The following is reposted from my wordpress blog.

​I finished a new drawing! I’ve decided to title this one “The Gaze” because of the far off expression in the subject’s eyes.  The photo I used was taken by Glennis Weston. The drawing is an 11×14 graphite on Strathmore 400 series drawing paper.

​I used a tortillon and blending stump in the beginning of making this drawing, but I abandoned both later on.

I was especially drawn to what was in the woman’s eyes, which again, ended up inspiring the title. I probably used just every pencil I had available to me to draw these. A trick I’ve figured out for spacing eyes correctly is to draw a line with ruler from the eye you’ve drawn to where the other eye should be. If you draw it with a light pencil, like you should, you can easily erase the line later.

For the hair, I used a combination of my vine charcoal stick and 8b pencil, which I applied in two layers.

​I originally filled in her bottom lip too dark, so I took my kneaded eraser, and making tapping motions, lightened it up a bit.

I was just about to call the drawing finished, when I realized I needed to put shading under her bottom lip.

​With the cheeks, I was careful to leave some space unshaded. This was the cheekbone. It needed to be lighter to stand out. Same deal with the center of the nose.

And here's the finished drawing.

​I was going to title this piece “Woman With Beehive”, but since most of her hair is invisible, I didn’t think that title would make sense.

​That’s all for now. I’ll see you guys next time.