Progressively Less Crappy Faces

Having taken a slight detour to play with my new painting tablet (you gotta admit that last eye piece was super cool), I decided to get back on my plan of drawing faces in different orientations. I picked up where I left off: the "Portraits 101" tutorial from SamDoesArts.

This time, I'm drawing the second of three faces. And this time I'm doing it on my shiny new tablet so I can paint it afterward.

Here's the reference photo for the second portrait:

Again, I have no clue who this woman or photographer are. It looks like she's at some important formal function. Looks fancy...

You know what doesn't look fancy? My first couple attempts at drawing her portrait! I wish I'd saved the first one; I bet you could've used a laugh. This one below is my second attempt. It's actually better than the first one.

Not pictured:

An even crappier attempt than this one -->

Attempt #2

After drawing this... abomination... I drew the irises as if she was looking at me and not off to the side like the reference is. I imagine her thinking, "LOL, nice try, nerd. Back to the literal drawing board."

Here are my next few attempts:

Attempt #3

Attempt #4

Attempt #5

Part way through the third attempt I realized that drawing on a tablet means I can add the actual photo, trace it, and then use that tracing to "check my math." That's the cyan line you see in the three drawings above. I also realized that my third attempt was off enough that I wanted to restart.

And holy crap is my fourth attempt so much better! Yeah, not so fast there buddy. I found it too tempting to draw a few lines, turn the trace layer on temporarily to check my progress, then erase lines and try again. While this yielded a much more accurate sketch, in retrospect I'm not sure it was helping me learn to draw this face.

I resolved not to do this for the fifth attempt. Instead, I plotted three reference points of the cranium--top, right brow edge, and left back point--so that my sketch would line up in the end. I took more careful measurements of the reference photo with my stylus and thumb and just spent more time observing my sketch and the reference and making corrections as I went along. I only checked the sketch a couple times out of curiosity after drawing a feature to see how well I did. I am really happy with the outline of her right cheek.

The next morning, I did a final round of correction (after having deleted the trace layer) and ended up with the final sketch below:

I like it!

My lines are jagged because I'm "chicken scratching," as the saying apparently goes. I'm not drawing long, light, confident lines. I've found that it's more difficult for me to control a stylus on a tablet surface than it is for me to control a pencil on paper. But that's what practice is for. I think I can use this sketch as a guide for painting.