baby WIP

[Franzo]

here is a new drawing ive started. Im not sure where im going with it, maybe no where but im going about it with a more diverse set of materials than usual. I am using HB Charcoal, 6H, H, F, 2B and 9b graphite on strathmore drawing paper. Take a look and let me know what you think so far.
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/20-Jan-2006/73094-baby2.jpg

[dragonshade]

Wow, that is scary. Not that the drawing is bad....that expression though...fear, surprize, mixed with a ghostlike quality. It is fun though working with a mix of materials...I started experimenting the same way. I'll be interested to see where this goes.

[Franzo]

here is some more work on this drawing. I am not so good with hair yet ...need practice with that. I think i am done with this now though...on to the next piece.
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/21-Jan-2006/73094-baby3.jpg

[JayD]

You might want to establish an imaginary center line down the center of the baby's head. I have not seen the ref photo but it looks like you might have a small symetry problem which can be quickly fixed of course.

I agree with sparrowhawk that that child has a disturbed look. Keep at the hair--I have been fumbling around with that problem for some time and have pretty much decided either to stop drawing humans or only draw bald men and women--sort of a land of the Luthors.

Overall you have a really great start there!

[Judi1957]

Hi Franzo:wave:
Good advice here from JayD. It is best if you do post your reference (as long as it is not copywrited) so you can get more help.
See you next time!:wave: Keep at it-share your next piece.:)

[Troy Rochford]

This looks like you loosely followed the baby WIP in JD Hillberry's book. I agree with the above feedback and would add that if you did follow JD's book, examine it closely and pay attention to his shading methods, direction, etc.. this looks overblended. Also as for hair, think of it as shapes rather than individual hairs and it will dramatically improve. I'm not that good at hair myself, but once I got my mind around that concept my hair got a thousand times better. I'd show you what my hair renderings USED to look like, but you haven't done anything to make me dislike you yet;)

[Franzo]

hey troy, you are correct, this is the baby from JD's book. Im not sure what you mean by overblended. This is the first time i have ever used chamois to blend my materials. It is also the first drawing in which i used more than 2 different types of pencil. I thought this blending made it look more realistic so you did take a bit of the wind out of my sails when you wrote that its overblended so I am curious as to how to know when I have gone too far. Thanks! PS- I dont this this photo truly depicts the rendering i made, it looks a little washed here - so maybe ill scan it next time.

[Franzo]

this is done with a scanner - the subtlies are so important and its so hard to get the image to look exactly like it does in person, very frustrating....eh whatever you get the idea...
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/21-Jan-2006/73094-babyscan1a.jpg

[Troy Rochford]

Franzo if you blend so much that you obliterate all traces of the original pencil strokes, then you've gone too far. It kills your texture for one thing, but more importantly it kills your contrast and makes things "muddy." If you look at the skin areas of your drawing, it's basically only two values - it should be a lot more, but the chamois has smeared your darks over all of your light midtones, and turned everything into one gray tone. The only real variation is where you left the white of the paper for the highlighted parts of the skin.

Don't take any of this wrong, please - I'm not trying to discourage you. If you are going to blend though, you need to use a MUCH lighter touch and go very slowly so you don't lose your texture and your contrast. Ideally if you really want to get good at this, you should put the chamois away until you can render smooth value transitions with ONLY your pencil. Once you learn to do that, THEN you can break out the chamois or tissue or whatever and fine tune things.

[Franzo]

im not taking it wrong - i just needed that explanation.......THANKS!!!!!!