Portrait Practice

Pencil portrait of unknown person as practice.
9”x9”, drawn in a Moleskine sketchbook
with a Blackwing Pearl pencil.

Well, I’m making progress. This one is an excercise from ”How I Crosshatch 3” by France Van Stone. Specifically from the section on Pencil crosshatching. I really enjoy the control pencil allows in getting values correct and the ability to erase where needed as one works. This one has about three hours in it.

I’m still getting my accuracy errors that I don’t catch early enough. I realize now that I get lost in the fun and peaceful feeling of drawing and neglect to stop and observe whether I’m really accurate or just imagining I am so I can keep on drawing. In this case, his left eye is a bit too large and the nose is not ”flat” enough in profile. Other than that, I’m reasonably happy with it. I could improve the shading values, but hey, enough is enough. One must apply the learning to the next drawing lest it becomes incessant fixing and work on the current one.😉

Reference portrait of unknown person as practice.