A SORT OF PORTRAIT SKRIBBLE TUTORIAL THINGY
Wot you have all bin waitin for ;^)
Part 6 ~ Skin Tone
If you are trying to attain "realism" with your graphite, then you MUST take your time over the next section....... This is where we learn to draw without pencils!!!! LOL
6. AT THE END OF THIS SECTION SHE'S GONNA LOOK SCARY
This is the section where we aim for photo-realism, to turn our line drawing into a solid, three dimentional graphite sculpture on your paper. I think the point is that you can never get 100% realistic with a pencil, you might achieve 99.5% or even 99.9%...... but if you wanted a black and white photo you would use a camera right?? It's that slight imperfection that makes the pencil drawing a work of art.......... Soz!! Starting to ramble a bit there!! Let's get on with the skribblin ;^D
6.1
I cannot stress how important this next action is, if I have a secret of my success then this is it and it is wot you have all been asking about...... Stroke over the entire face area other than the eyes and lips with the lightest of touches from the H grade pencil and try to put down the faintest of even tones. This does need some practice but after a short time you will have it mastered.
6.2
Now, with a CLEAN blending stump, buff the surface of the skin area AT RIGHT ANGLES to your pencil strokes to spread the graphite into a thin even tone over the entire area. Avoid the hair as you will pick up additional graphite on the stump and leave dark streaks. Like before this might take a little practice but you will soon be dropping in base skin tone as easy as eating double choc chip ice cream ;^D
Girlz should find this easier than boyz coz they have practice with brushing on delicate makeup and the next few steps are a good analogy to putting on foundation make up......... You'll see wot I mean :^)
6.3
Now lay some graphite down onto your scrap paper a little heavier than you just did on the face and buff over with the stump, picking up graphite onto the stump. With care you should be able to brush the graphite from the stump onto the drawing where you want to add more tone/shadow. You can see this on the piccy below, especially on her forehead, under her left eye, cheekbones, left side of chin and top lip. Build up the tone slowly and stop when you feel there is enough...... You can always add more later.... It is always harder to remove excess.
6.4
Even more tone is going down from the stump. You can now see shape definition under both eyes and I am now working on soft lighting shadows on the cheeks and chin area. Compare the piccy below with the one above and you can see where the tone is going.
6.5
Almost all the "realism" has now been added to the face and, apart from laying down the initial base skin tone, no pencils have been used to put graphite directly onto the drawing at all during this section. At the finish of this skribble the blending stump will have been used as much as the pencil in producing the final image.
6.6
At some point I decide that I can do no more with skin tone until I have added some more details.......... At the same time something makes me choose to put her thorax into the skribble..... Thorax is a posh word for chest LOL
