Piece #2: Busted

After finishing the hips study of Mikaila Dimova I decided to move on to a bust study. I figured this would be more difficult than the hips due to the hand and the geometry of the breasts and the muscles in the neck. It was, but I was more confident when the hips I drew didn't look like complete garbage. So, onward!

Here's the reference photo again:

And here's my bust study:

I am super pleased with how this turned out! Especially that hand. I've been showing off this hand to all my friends and colleagues I've told about my new hobby.

"Yeah, yeah, the boobs are nice. But check out this hand!" - me, to anyone who will listen

I did keep in mind my struggle with the hair and decided to skip it this time around until I can learn some techniques for drawing hair. One thing at a time. Or, well, one less thing this time.

I also wasn't sure the left breast was going to turn out well until the end. The model is quartered away from the viewer, but I was still unsure that the left breast should take up so much real estate on the torso. I think it turned out well, especially with the blending technique I learned about in this tutorial by GemmaChambersArt.

But it wasn't until near the end of the study that I really understood exactly what was going on with the lighting. I noticed after finishing this piece that I didn't really take the time to observe the reference photo and understand it before drawing. I just copied what I saw. A dark shadow in the reference photo became a dark shadow in my piece.

I'll need to make sure this doesn't become a habit. Art is a selective recreation of the things the artists thinks are important. I might not always be able to find the perfect reference photo to copy from. In fact, I want to be able to deviate from reference photos as often as I need to. For that, I need to understand the structure of whatever I'm drawing and its interaction with light and color.

For now, I think I did pretty well.

Here's what I learned from drawing this piece:

• Constructing the forms from simpler forms really works! I created the hand by first roughing in boxes and then refining. I didn't watch any tutorials for this; I just guessed and tried it.

• I heard some advice in another SamDoesArts video on YouTube: Spend as much time observing your reference as you do sketching it. This seems like sound advice to me.

• Blending is great for smooth skin textures.

• If I'm going to lay on a lot of graphite for shading layers, the type of paper matters. I could probably overcome this with more skill, but choosing better paper may be choosing better battles.