Working on a custom charcoal portrait of a baby boy for Mother's Day

OK. I saw Oprah's first post to her Twitter account, so what to do with the rest of the day????

Work on a charcoal portrait! This is where I am after about 2 hours of drawing - charcoal on "natural white" drawing paper. I'll get some better photos after I work a little more! So far I'm very happy with the mouth and the eyes, and I think the hair is coming along...I just need to give it some dimension. I'll keep you posted!

PS...There's still time to place a custom portrait order before Mother's Day!!!

Figure Drawing Techniques...6

Ok it's not a figure..it's a puppy...but the basic principle of figure drawing can be applied here as well. These four photos show the progress just from an hour of sketching - I have a ways to go - but I thought I'd show you how I got started.

This is a cute grey dog, whose breed I'll have to post later cuz I forgot. It is a custom portrait for a gift - I can't wait for the owner to see it!

I started on medium grey matt board. The first few minutes is just getting the gesture of the body correct. Making sure I have enough negative space around the dog to allow for framing. (the pictures are cropped...actual page is larger)

Then I slowly block in areas of shadow. This is done with vine charcoal which is very easy to manipulate and erase if necessary.

I follow that by further defining the major shadows and shapes, being sure to work on the whole dog as to keep proportions acurate.

I start to further define the toes, ears eyes and nose, using a hard charcoal pencil.

I slowly add the highlight, again thinking of the whole dog. I want to develop the whole portrait at once - not get caught up in just the eyes or the paws, which can be very easy to do.

So that is where I am now...I will keep you posted on my progress! And here's a shot of where I was working. At the kitchen table. Even though I have a studio in the basement. But it was hot down there! And there's AC up here! Cut me some slack!