29 Faces Challenge - Face #6

In my last post, I mentioned that I knew I had made lots of mistakes in Face #4, the male. I took Klair Scattergood's (aka Rhomany of Rhomany's Realm) Portrait classes in 2012 when she first introduced them. I have mostly drawn females since those classes. I had forgotten a lot about the differences in the male and female faces.

On Saturday afternoon, I reviewed the first set of class videos on the basic male features and the front-facing portrait. Wow, I really was off on a lot of things. After reviewing it once, I went through it again and drew a basic male along with her explanation. This is my result.

You may notice some light pencil stokes that make two stacked squares. These are the structure that Rhomany uses to build her faces. She developed this for herself because she said her ovals always came out wonky. You will have to take her classes for an explanation. I will say that her classes helped me because I draw wonky ovals, too, but that was just a small part of what I learned.

This guy is much too perfect, but as you get used to the system, you can begin to be more freehanded with it, thus losing the perfection.

I did use a photograph I had in my sketchbook to draw his eyes. Men have such interesting folds in their eyes. They can be really different. The ears are all over the place, too. You can also see some lightly sketched-in hair because I am going to take this guy beyond the initial sketch.

When I was taking Rho's first class on females, we were coloring the girls using Prismacolor pencils. If you have worked with them, you know that the Prismacolors will pick up any place you erased or otherwise altered the surface of the paper. Because of this, I got in the habit of doing a draft drawing in a sketchbook and then transferring the finished drawing to whatever type of paper I wanted to use, depending on the art medium I wanted to use. There are many ways to transfer, but I am going to show you my easy and cheap method.

I am planning to finish this guy with graphite pencils and a blending stump on Bristol paper. The paper has a smooth vellum surface that works well with graphite. Here are the steps I used to transfer him from the sketchbook to the Bristol paper.

• I decided the guy needed a shirt over all his muscles. I found a photo of a guy in a t-shirt online and used it to help draw a shirt on my sketch.
• I scanned the sketch. Then I took it into Photoshop and resized it. I am using a 7 in X 10 in piece of Bristol. I needed the sketch to be a bit smaller for it to fit nicely on the paper.
• Next I printed the resized sketch on a piece of plain paper.
• I used a trick I learned from my fourth grade teacher. I made my own carbon paper by coloring the backside of the paper with graphite. We used plain old No. 2 pencils in 4th grade, but I like to use a Prismacolor Ebony pencil. It has a soft, fat lead that leaves a lot of graphite on the paper. I'm down to a stub, so I ordered a new 2-pack a few days ago.
• After positioning the paper over the Bristol, I secured it with paperclips. Then I used a ballpoint pen to trace over the basic parts of the sketch. I don't press hard because I want to leave a minimum amount of graphite and I do not want to leave a groove in the paper. (Prismacolors and graphite do not work well over those.) Because the soft Ebony pencil leaves so much graphite, you don't need a lot of pressure.

 In this photo, you can see the red ballpoint line of my tracing. I use a colored pen to make it easier to see. If, for some reason, I want to make another tracing, I use a different color of pen.

You can see the graphite on the backside of the printed sketch. To make sure you have covered all the needed parts with the graphite, hold the paper up to let light shine through. You will easily see any spots you missed.

I traced a minimum of lines to give me the basic shapes. I only traced lines along the bottom of the eyebrows to give placement. A photo of some ears will help with the shading. Only the bottom of the nose was traced. Shading with the blending stump will make the upper portion.

It will be a couple of days before I post again. We're having a Labor Day cookout at a friend's house tomorrow. It will be a full day of activity and I know I will have no time for art. The guy will just have to wait.