Day Three of my 365 Day Sketch Challenge

Continuing with day three of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to sketch people in ink and watercolour. Not all of these quick portraits turned out well, but they were all a good exercise to identify what I am confident about drawing, and what I need to practice more of.

Drawing Earthsworld Challenge

I did the latest Drawing Earthsworld Challenge from Facebook, the eyebrows are a bit distracting, so I’m definitely adding “eyebrow sketching” to my list of tutorials during this 365 day sketching challenge.

I sketched the eyes too big as well. I have to figure out a way of drawing the eyes I see, rather than sketching them from stored memories. I usually start sketches by drawing the eyes first, so am going to try to approach portrait sketching by mapping in the overall outline first, before looking at the details.

When I do urban sketching I use the outline approach and then fill in the details, but for some reason when I’m sketching portraits, I nearly almost always start with the eyes. Well they are the windows to the soul!

I especially like the skin tones I used. They’re not based on reality – the guy in the source photo was as bright-faced as this, but this is the stylistic choice I seem to have developed a preference for on my quick portraits. And as long as you pay close attention to the shadow shapes and placement, your portraits will retain a grip on reality.

Skin Tone Reference Card

The colours are all developed from a base of Opera Rose/Pink and New Gamboge (not HYL as referenced on the image). Then I dilute and mix in a variation of Cobalt Turquoise Light, Indian Red, and Natural Tint. Recently, I’m favouring this bright and slightly abstract skin tone range. It might be a fad, but I’m enjoying playing around with it.

Quick Urban Sketch

Then while I was out at the post office waiting to send off my Christmas cards I picked up a receipt and did a quick pencil sketch of a lady waiting for someone in the queue. I almost always take my small A6 Hahnemühle sketchbook and a pen out with me wherever I go, but I didn’t have room in my bag for this trip, and I went without it. And lo and behold, there was a face I wanted to sketch. So I had to use the “art” supplies at the post office.

Live Zoom Portrait Session with Dylan

I also attended Dylan’s Live Portrait speed sketching event of zoom.

I usually sketch these portraits quite large, but this week I tried to keep the face sketches smaller. This is my way of practicing how to depict the features with less lines.

There’s at least portrait from each time limit (30s, 1min, 2min, 4min, and 6min) I was happy with, but most of them are an exercise of finding my way. Previously I’ve sketched directly in pen, but this time around I messed about with pencil sketches, not sure if I want to get comfortable with that though. I’d much rather stick to pen. Maybe next week, I’ll just experiment with different pens instead.

Every Tuesday Dylan Sara hosts a live Zoom Portrait sketching event, and I’ve been pretty diligent about attending this two hour session every week the past couple of months. The poses range from 30 seconds to 6 minutes, and there’s usually a theme for the pose prompts.

You can find out about Dylan’s online zoom event, and many others, in a summary post about online sketching events.

Reviewing my Ink and Watercolour Sketches

The key concept of improving your sketches is to assess each one to see what you like and don’t like. This way you can repeat what you like and avoid what didn’t work well – or at least be aware of your sketching challenges.

The more I sketch, the more I realise the key concept to focus on is:

DRAW WHAT YOU SEE …. not what you think you see.

Nail that, and you can draw anything.

My journey continues.