Nathan's Sketchbook

[John]

Nice work. It looks like you followed the same path I am on. Thanks for sharing.

[Norman]

I think you really made awesome progress – I guess I will work through the beginner’s course, too 😀

Where are you at now? Are you still working on the lessons?

[Nathan]

Hey mate,

Yeah still here. And yes still been working. I’ve just completed Portrait Drawing For Beginners by Chris Legaspi. I’m starting a charcoal portrait this weekend. It will be the second time I’ve ever used charcoal, so I’m a little nervous and excited to use it 🙂 I’ll post up my progress over the coming weeks 🙂

[Norman]

I find portrait drawing really one of the most challenging subjects and also extremely interesting. I try to to a lot of quick sketches and have basically moved from the “Who is this?” “Oh just some random person off the internet” (when I was really sketching the person asking) to “Hey, this is xyz! But he looks completely wrong. Why did you draw it like this?” “????%!(!=(!!”

😀

I found it is crucial (for me) to work extremely systematically and measure thoroughly at every stage.

What kind of charcoal do you use? Pencils or sticks or vine charcoal or …?

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by Norman.

[Nathan]

Yeah, portrait drawings are definitely a challenging subject. You definitely need a system of measuring and remeasuring, but I find once you have the likeness it can get really fun as you render. I’m still new to it all. I’m mainly doing it because I love capturing emotions or the personality in a person. The face is the most obvious way to capture that.

The model I’m using is Rajif from the image gallery. I had a lot of fun scanning through his expressions gallery. There are so many awesome portrait shots and his facial expression are hilarious. I couldn’t help but laugh at some of them. It was really hard to choose just one…for now 😉

I’m looking at this portrait as a composition as a whole. Not just getting the likeness – I haven’t done that before. I wanted to choose a pose of his that elicited a response from me and something I could tell a story with 🙂

I ended up choosing this image as my reference. I couldn’t help but smile at this picture. It looks like a ton of fun to draw, and there is definitely a story behind his expression.

It should be fun. I’ll post up progress shots.

[Norman]

Great choice – looking forward to see your progress. I guess that is a really good start – to choose something thats meaningful for you personally and try to tell a story.

[Author]

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