Finally! day 30 of 30 - the last post of the last drawing.

This has long been my favorite image of Jesus. It's not my art - I came across it online somewhere years ago.

So many depictions of Jesus are deep, serious, heavy and sombre. This drawing is how I personally like to picture Jesus; upbeat, happy, healthy, thrilled to be in your company and thrilled that you want to have a relationship with him. He looks here like he's pulling for you, believes in you, sees you primarily for your positive traits and thinks you can do it (whatever it is).

This Jesus image is alive, fun and vibrant - someone that is a kick to be around.

I've always been impressed at how much emotion this artist conveys in this very simple collection of broad lines and white shapes. This is good art whittled down to just the critical 'working parts'.

As much as I like the simplicity of this I've sometimes wished for a more finished version of this same pose and expression, so here it is:

I started by blocking in the same flowing solid shapes but then, instead of filling them in solidly as in the reference photo I developed the depth and tone of a more realistic pose.

The '30 day/30 portraits' drawing adventure has been lots of fun! Devoting high quality time to just about anything on a regular basis is bound to pay dividends. It's certainly has been the case for my portrait drawing skills. I still believe, as stated in earlier posts that if you can capture a likeness accurately you can draw just about anything. It feels good to have made much progress towards that end.

Thank you for following along - I hope you enjoyed the adventure too!

Day 29 - Done in Ernest

One grizzly bearded face deserves another so after learning how to draw beards with Steve Jobs I was eager to continue working with beards on another.

This drawing of Hemingway the novelist came together well using mostly soft pencils and quite a bit of the paper blending tools. I am happy with how the eyes work together. This drawing went fast compared to many others - about an hour.

As the 30 day/30 portrait adventure comes to a close I'll say it's been fun and exciting. It's taken discipline to devote a couple of hours to it every day for a month but the payoff has been much improved drawing skills and confidence. Seeing ability and speed improve is exhilarating.

One last drawing tomorrow for day 30!  Who should it be?? ?

day 28 - a Jobs well done??

This one combined two  reference photos because the first reference photo was cropped at the base of the forehead. Since the photos of Steve Jobs were taken about 10 years apart it was tricky getting the two looks to merge together for one believable portrait. I also left the eyeglasses out at the beginning thinking it might be nice to render him without them but added them later because the glasses turned out to be a very strong identifier.

day 27 - She or he??

Sitting in a trailer up north with by the light of a battery LED lantern I didn't know what the subject would be.

So I just started drawing a made up face. As a few features fell into place I asked myself if this was a female or male face.  The answer wasn't clear but the path was set for the remainder of the drawing to be an exploration of what makes features be either male or female.

The eye on the left and the lips on the right are more masculine -the eye on the right and lips on the left more feminine. The hair is gender neutral.

Its easy to see the vast difference between the craggy male face of Willy Nelson and the smooth graceful lines of Duchess Kate, But when you go towards the middle from these two extremes the difference becomes very subtle. 

I ended up with this rendition where you can't really say if it's man or woman. In honor of the old Saturday Night Live skit, I'll name this drawing 'Pat', a name that works either way!

day 26 - more royalty

Here's another caracature of Kate with her new baby. This was fun and fast, drawn mostly with a soft dark Ebony pencil. Drawing a caricature right after doing a realistic drawing of the same subject is enjoyable because the features are all 'figured out' from the realistic drawing. It's easy to get them in the right place then exagerate them to create the silly look of a caricature.

I threw the sketch of Big Ben in the background just to help viewers place the subject a little easier.

day 25

A pretty good attempt at Kate Middleton - Duchess of Cambridge.

This one was a lot of work. I had the eyes out of place and they really didn't work with the rest of the facial features.  One of the best aspects about doing a portrait a day for 30 days is that you really get a feel for how all the elements of a human face come together. It gave me increased understanding of how fascinating all the muscles and bones truly are. All the facial elements need to be working together if the drawing is going to be convincing.

The eye on the left (her right) is in a pretty good place right now but you can see that the paper there is badly overworked, nearly worn out from excessive erasures and start overs. At a certain point the sheet is too frayed up to draw on any more.

This sketch pad contains pretty good paper but not the best. It's doing a good job absorbing the pencil strokes, blending, heavy shading and occasional abuse does have limitations.

Day 24 - Marilyn

Just a quick post for you tonight.

I did this one about 90% upside down, tweaking just a few things after turning it right side up.