I love doing portraits and recently I purchased a download over at conceptart.org of a fantastic artist named Zhang Lu. He’s got a great digital technique that is similar to doing portraits with white and black charcoal on toned paper. I’ve come to really enjoy the technique.
Here are a couple I did recently.
In-laws came into town last weekend. Got a little behind but I hope to catch up this weekend. I’m not going to try and scan all 1,000 of these thing. Every week or so I’ll post some of the best pages. Remember, almost every one is odd numbers are reference and even numbers of from memory based on the referenced image.
Have you heard about the 1,000 face project? No, well read on then. I find a lot of inconsistency when I draw faces and figure drawing in general to be honest. It takes me a long time because I’m constantly either painstakingly coping the model or my reference or just king of guessing at my mark making until it looks right.
I’ve decided to go back to basics. I’ve started by reading up on my basics from the drawing teachers I respect and envy the most, Frank Reilly, George Bridgeman, and Andrew Loomis. There is also a health dose of a few people from the web whose technique or drawing I really love. People such as Lucas Graciano, Hope Reiley, and Eric Gist as well as a few others.
After a couple weeks of reading and study I decided to implement what I’ve learned by drawing 1,000 faces. In a row. OK, I’ll stop to sleep and do some other work but the idea is to overload my brain and hands with drawing faces til it becomes second nature or my hand falls off, which ever comes first. My plan is to do 500 men and 500 women. Each odd numbers drawing will be done from reference and than I’ll do the same drawing from memory to apply what I’ve leaned.
Most of the drawings will be done in about 5 to 15 minutes to start although I won’t rule out any longer drawings but the concepts I want to focus on are more to do with structure, proportion, speed and less on finishing and advanced stages of rendering.
My initial plan is to have a 90 day deadline on this. That’s 11 faces a day.
As I go I’ll also be posting and passing on some awesome handouts and information I’ve gathered along the way.
Here’s the drawings from day 1.
I ran across a few more drawings from my regular figure drawing sessions. Click to enlarge.
I hope you like them.
Recently I began attending a weekly figure drawing sessions. I always thought that the best way in the world to getting better as an artist, no matter what medium or genre you’re into, is to do live figure drawing. The models so far have been fantistic dressing up in costumes and utilizing various props.
