[Berg]

Two portraits, as you can see. I have problems finding weight, and I'm struggling for structure. Second one is better then first since it's regularly checked in the mirror...

Anyone has tips to enhance my work? Excercices, ways of building up a portrait like these? Currently I start with straight lines for the proporitions, after I try to roughly block in shapes, but most of the time I'm drawing lines there, not masses...

Help would be greatly appreciated! (and general comments too!)


Thanks for looking,
Sietse-Jan

[Heysoos]

I think a good excercise for you to try would be negative drawing. Get some sort of soft drawing medium such as vine charchoal, or soft graphite sticks and cover the whole page with a uniform mid value background. Then use a needed eraser to erase out the light areas you see, and block in the deeper shades in thick shapes. This will make you rely less on linework to describe form and more on light and shadow which will give your work a sense of mass. Here is an example of what I am talking about (it isn't mine, just a sample I found on the net)

[Jimmyjimjim]

A technique I like to use when drawing with pencil is to first VERY roughly get in greyscale with a variety of leads (8b-hb). Make sure you drag your hand across your drawing as you're working, as it helps fill any white area with about a 10% grey. Don't draw ANY lines. Continue tightening your pencils with "criss-cross" markmaking until you've thoroughly established all your values, and everything is getting nice and tight (save for lines, still no). At this point, start by taking the edge of your pencil and describing all your edges and areas of sharp contrast. Hold your pencil at about a 35 degree angle to the paper. Best I can describe it is that you're not QUITE making a line. Continue tightening everything like this. Then, take an eraser and carve out all your hard whites and highlights. This way, nothing has the dreaded "outlined" look. Hope I described that OK.

[Berg]

Thanks for the replies, very usefull and greatly appreciated! I will try those!

Sietse-Jan