Tuesday, January 28, 2014

A pencil portrait of Bernice Ang


Hello again!

Welcome to another posting of my pencil portraits.

This time, I have the drawing of a cute little girl -- Bernice, when she was about 2 or 3 years old, and I would like to thank her mom for lending me the precious photo as reference. It was the only copy they had left!

I have given the drawing to Bernice, who is 10 years old now, and she liked it. I'm so glad not only that she liked it, but also I have taken a long time to do up the drawing and it was finally out.

So here are the steps, starting with the 'ingredients' I used:

The pencils, 3B, 4B, 6B and a little bit of 8B.

The erasers, kneadable types.
The tortillions for blending the shadings. They are just paper rolls, actually.
The paper, A3 size memoires card.

The tissues for blending the shadings smoothly.

The Mono Zero eraser pen for drawing fine white lines.

A little new addition, I just happened to buy a can of Workable Fixative lately, so I used it only at the end of the drawing to keep the pencil lead in place.
I have yet to explore how 'workable' it really is.

So here's the first step, sketching the proportion of the face.

Took me a while to clean up the proportion and get the whole picture in.

Beginning the shading with a thin layer of 3B pencil lead,
then blending it with a piece of tissue to create a smooth shade.

The face in basic 3B shading.

Working on the eyes next, also using a 3B pencil but with a bit
more pressure to create a darker shade.

Shading of the facial features done in 3B pencil with different pressure.

Shading a bit of the hair too with 3B pencil.

Beginning to darken the shadings with the other darker pencils, like 4B and 6B.

Nice to see the difference in tones using the different pencils. 

Time to do some solid work on the hair.
Which was one of the hardest thing taking the longest time to finish.

The initial drawing of fine white lines to show reflection of light on the hair.
A lot more work coming for the mono zero.

The hair darkened with 4B pencil.

More darkening with 6B and a bit of 8B on the hair, and blending with tortillions too.

Strengthening the reflection with more mono zero.
The effect gets stronger when the hair gets darker.

Will leave the hair at this for a while and come back later.

Working on the other parts of the drawing now, like the hand.
As usual, shading began with 3B and got darker with 4B and 6B.

Working on the fur coat now. Beginning with a basic 3B shading as well.

Blending the 3B shading with tissue for a smooth shade of light grey.

Been using a lot of the kneadable erasers as well to create a white shade on the grey. The effect is blunt and soft, not sharp white lines like the mono zero.

Working with the tortillion and darker pencils for more effects.

Looking furry so far...

Now for some sharper white lines on the fur to create more effects.

The fur coat developed to a certain stage.

Completing the fur coat.

Working on the background now. Shading done with a 6B pencil, starting with a lighter pressure and increasing as it developed.

Lots of blending with tissue to smooth out the shading in the background.

Increasing the tone from left to right, using only 6B pencil.

Now for some fine white lines to represent the reflected fine hair under the light source.

Development of the fine white reflected hair, caught under the light source.
Finally, some last bits of touch ups here and there...

And here we have it, the finished drawing of Bernice.

The entire drawing took me about 29 hours to complete, spread across several months as I was always having trouble with time. It doesn't like me any more and we're at odds.

But, life goes on and things gets done, as long as there's still time left to use!

Thanks for looking! Hope you like it.  n___n