Drawing Tutorial - Hair - Stages 4-9

Sorry, don't know what happened to the images on these posts...I will try and fix them soon...

Continued!

STAGE 4: STILL laying down strokes in the direction of hairs. I continue to go back to the beginning and darken things up while making the lines longer and longer to shape the style.

STAGE 5: Keep molding the style...continuing to keep to the darkest areas. Avoid highlights, but make the strokes into the highlights very random and jagged. Also: Turn the paper as needed to make the direction of the hairs easier to draw.

STAGE 6: Finish up the style. Continuously going back and darkening things up in layers.

STAGE 7: Here I take my tortillon, dirty or clean, doesn't matter. And go over the entire style in the direction of the hairs. Avoid crossing the strokes as much as possible to avoid a smudged look. Smooth everything out.

STAGE 8:Pick out highlights. I use my beloved "Hold-tu" putty and shape it into a sharp wedge. Then "draw" (drag) lines, uneven to each other, into the highlights so they blend into the pencil strokes and brighten the areas a bit. You could also do this with a sharp white eraser I'm sure, but the hold-tu works best for me.

STAGE 9: Time to push the darks! Go back over all dark areas with 3B again, or use something darker if you like. Add stray hairs around edges of curls and outside of the "border" of the head and also around the face. I avoided the face ones a bit since I haven't put the skins tones down yet. Give the illusion of individual hairs all over the head by drawing them at various pressures into highlighted areas. Continue to go back and push the darks until the very end of the drawing. You will add a lot more stray hairs at the end, when everything is done with skin, background etc...as a last step.

Stay tuned for more of this portrait's stages. This concludes the hair tutorial. Thanks for the visit!

Drawing Tutorial - Hair - Stages 1 to 3

This is a family requested self portrait that I turned into a hair tutorial for an art forum that I'm a moderator on. It's from a few years ago, but I thought I'd share it in stages during a few blog posts. As with all art, this is not a set in stone way to do things, but just the way I do it (in an accelerated tutorial type fashion, normally I'd spend days working on hair while this was done in an evening) and if used should be tweeked to fit your style. Enjoy.

STAGE 1: The outline. This is what it looks like when I've completed the sketch and then cleaned up all the yucky stray sketch lines and eraser lines. It looks dark here because I sketch very dark, going over and over my lines. But I then lighten it up by rolling blu-tack over

the entire sketch, which you'll see in stage 2.You'll see that with the hair I block in some of the highlighted areas, but I don't stay a slave to the picture...sometimes you can make it look much better!

STAGE 2: I am using a 3B 0.5 mechanical pencil through this entire tutorial, to keep it simple. I start laying down

strokes in the dark areas, following the direction of the hairs. I know usually these tutorials say, "Don't draw individual hairs, just block in color." Well...I draw hairs....it works for me!

STAGE 3: Continuing to lay down strokes in dark areas. It's important to be careful with the direction of the pencil strokes. If you go too fast and they go all over

the place, you end up with straw, instead of hair.

I'll stop there for this post. Three more stages in a few days. Thanks for stopping by!

Commission Finale!

I finally finished this commission that has been stressing me out for so long. Thought I'd share the completed piece just for the heck of it. It's 16x20 and all graphite. Please excuse the poor photo of the drawing, I packaged it up for shipping and then realized I hadn't scanned it or photographed it. After the luck I had with this commission I decided rather than risk damaging it by exposing it to any elements again I took the picture in the plastic I seal it in for shipment. Better than nothing I suppose.




Also shown is the one reference photo I was given to work from. I thought the composition of the photo didn't flow right, so I took some artistic license there. :)

UPDATE: I got word from the customer and they are in love with the portrait. They said it was beyond their expectations and can't wait to get it on the wall. The husband said his wife just stared at it with an open mouth for ten minutes. I'm so thrilled they like it! I can breathe now.

I can see this becoming a new addiction...

So how do you start a blog? I guess the best way is to tell you why I'm here, yea? I am a Mom first of all. We have two beautiful, wonderful kids. A son who is going to be 5 in June, and a daughter who is nearly 18 months. I am a military spouse second. My hubby is a Career Counselor in the Army, currently stationed at Fort Jackson, SC. And an artist third. I have been selling my art on the internet for a few years. Been doing commissions for customers all over the world. And although I have always loved drawing, I really got burnt out on doing art that everyone but me was choosing. So I started doing some for myself in my spare time, as little of it as there was. And I loved it, I was back to feeling the passion and the excitement of finishing a piece. Then recently I found Etsy, and another excitement found me. People came to this site to find handmade things, and they wanted them to be handmade! They didn't want something handmade just because it was cheaper than storebought, they really wanted something crafted and loved by human hands. I thought, wow...I could start making jewelry again, which I stopped doing years ago for lack of money and time. I could start trying to get it out there. So I did it, I opened an Etsy store. See Beth's Jewelry, Art, and More. And it's been a slow start, but a fun adventure. I've met some great people that I share interests with and I've even made some sales. My fun little Chick Magnets have been quite a hit. Okay, so I've bought more than I've sold so far...no comment on that. :)

I think that's enough for a first post! Who knows if it made any sense, it's 1 a.m. after all.