Drawing "The Gaze"

4/17/2017

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.