Jeremy process
Ninja September 4th, 2007
During my last class, my classmate, Danielle had remarked that hair was my thing, so I decided to take her cue + sketch some hair in my notebook. She’s got the lovely, wavy hair on the right page. Jeremy is the shaggy, layered head on the left page. After seeing my doodle of his hair, Jeremy kindly volunteered to let me do his portrait. Thanks so much, Jeremy!!
This is my pencil sketch of him. I realized that the pen doodling was more fun, so I switched back to the pen.
I started off with the purple pen. I liked how the pen has this feeling of permanence, + it forced me to make each mark purposeful.
Then I added some blue pen, a thin wash of gesso, + yellow highlighter (over the areas where the light was directly hitting the face).
I then loosely blocked in the shadows with the green highlghter.
I used gesso as a blending medium here. His face was looking too round + youthful, so I started to add more definition with pen.
Just adding some more blue + purple pen. He looks funny without eyebrows, huh?
I tried to age him by darkening the shadows to accentuate the angles of his face. I then blocked in the highlights + shadows with the yellow + green highlighters respectively. Unfortunately, I went a lil’ overboard with the heavy pen, + his hair started to blend in with the values of his face.
I applied a thick layer of gesso to his hair + background. What’s interesting is how the highlighter gradually gets absorbed into the gesso layer on the face + becomes a faint tint.
I added more crosshatching with the pen + used gesso to bring out the highlights of his skin + hair. I then reversed the background gradient so that there would be greater contrast between his hair + the background.
Happy drawing,
Ninja
