head drawing

Hi! Here’s my first attempt at drawing the head using the new materials – pastel sanguine & white pencils on a grey/tan toned background. I think I caught a likeness of the original ref photo (a marble carving) but can definitely still work on the chiaroscuro. It’s so hard to keep  myself from drawing too hard at the beginning (makes it difficult to erase & restate proportions, etc!).

the final drawing!

We followed the method given in William Maughan’s “Artist’s Complete Guide to Drawing the Head” – start with a very loose “gesture” of the head & shoulders, trying to avoid outline, then sort of “sculpting” the features using the shadow shapes & principles of chiaroscuro as a guide. Many more of these drawings to come over the next couple months… up next week is a focus on drawing eyes.