Tips on Pencil Portrait Drawing - Using Strong Illumination and Shadows
Posted: Saturday, January 17, 2009
by Remi Engels
Remi's Arts
Value is one of the most vexing elements of portraiture. Most artists are very reluctant about tone and do not push the shadows far enough. This is often because:
1. Their eyes are not yet coached to see the delicate gradations, and
2. The fear of losing a drawing.
Starting artists can see large lights and large darks and half-tones easily enough but it takes eye-training to see the finer gradations in value.
As usual, we first strike the construct and place the facial features (brow line and base of the nose).
When working with a intricate tonal pattern the key objective is striving to simplify the patterns. Sketching, in general, is invariably an exercise in simplification, i.e., making choices.
The next step consists of blocking-in the overall dark/light pattern with simple tones. At this time do not yet refine the tones because doing so will surely lead to disappointment.
Using a stump or your fingers, blend the graphite. If you use a paper stump be careful not to deaden the tones. The lights can be added, improved, and refined with your putty eraser.
The facial features and the hair are now carefully plotted in. Keep these structural lines very soft. Also, proceed constructing the tonal shapes|forms keeping in mind that, except for the sun-dappled pattern, the tone must be suppressed, i.e., nothing in the shadows must pop out.
This is a subtle balancing act. Tone must be added and then subtly modeled and/or removed. This is an exercise in going back and forth.
Also, do not yet want to finish the facial features but be sure that the likeness is already there and that the sizes are right. That is, at this time, your drawing should look like an under-painting.
Like color, tone is affected by the neighboring value. You can see, for instance, that once the hair is hatched-in and somewhat refined that the facial area now appears lighter than before.
Now, you can return to the facial features and break down the large tonal forms into their various shapes and relationships by employing hatching, stumping and delicate eraser work.
The challenge with dappled light is to render the delicate patterns while still keeping a coherent total. As a general rule, cast shadows have hard edges while form shadows have soft edges of changing degrees. When using a stump, you should hardly tap the paper. This allows you to keep the small lights that reflect off the paper thereby keeping the image alive and vibrating with light.
To produce the most fragile tones use the blackest, hardest pieces of putty eraser you can find.
As is the case with the facial features, the tones of the hair must be subordinated to the overall light and must match with the face both physically and emotionally.
Lastly, at this time you can leave the drawing as is or you can push it further by adding more minutia. That is an artistic decision left to you.
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