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

WEI TING and QQ 2

Hello again! Welcome to my drawing blog.

Today I shall post the second drawing of 10 year old Wei Ting and her cute doggy QQ.

As I seldom practice painting, I am still kinda uncomfortable with the brushes and the outcome. I shall try to overcome this problem and phobia by spending more quality time burying myself under the tons of painting materials I bought but never used. I mean... use them. Seriously, as I don't have that much time to waste.

Here's another attempt at Acrylic painting, with all my heart, to make some significant improvement so it'd be worth my time. To begin, the ingredients:

A 45 x 60cm canvas.
I used a bigger size canvas for this painting than my usual practice pieces.

 The easel that I bought for $17 at the stationery shop.

A set of brushes that didn't cost too much. I'm still learning, not a pro.

A palette and a bucket with multiple compartments for water to dip the brushes in. 

I have several brands of acrylic paints.
This one is not expensive and good for practice works.

I also bought some slightly more expensive one in big bottles, especially for colors that I may use in bigger quantity than others, like white. Here I have just gotten a bottle of Flesh Pink for skin color, and I'm very happy with it as I don't have to mix skin colors myself anymore. But mixing different brands of acrylic together, though they did not explode, had different effects.
This brand for example, turns matt when dried while the others were glossy.

The other brand that I used. Burnt umber (1st from left) was most used for the shadings.

I also got some sponge brushes. These were used for painting the varnish layer at the end of the painting to protect the surface of the painting.

A plastic dropper to suck up water or other mediums to add to the paint. They are very inexpensive and come in a pack of 10 pieces for a little over a dollar.

To begin, I needed to prepare the canvas for use. The surface was sanded with a fine grained sand paper to smooth out any roughness.

Next, I added some acrylic painting medium to white gesso.

I painted the gesso on to the sanded surface of the canvas.
Did several layers and left to dry.

When the gesso was dried, I sanded the surface again, gently this time, to smooth it out further. The canvas was ready to be used now.

After adding in the pencil outlines, I blended the lines with a brush to create some shading effects, to get some idea of the shadings first, and also to thin out the pencil lead on the canvas so it would not smudge too badly when paint was applied to the canvas.

I also used kneadable eraser.
This was to remove some pencil lead on the canvas to prevent smudging.
The black carbon does show up beneath the paints if not reduced to a thin layer.

Here's the overall completed proportion layer.

I was lacking some confidence since I haven't painted for ages. I used some green to paint the shadings first to warm up. It also helped with the skin tone.

That was for the starting. Didn't look good here.

After gaining some confidence, the medium darker skin tone was added. It was a mixture of flesh pink and burnt umber.

After applying some lighter skin tone, I worked on getting the features out slowly, from light to dark.

The development of the face from left to right.

Working on the other eye and also adding some pink color to the cheeks and lips.

I spent a lot more time painting the lips carefully this time.

Time to work on the hair. I started with a thin layer of burnt umber.

Before I was done with the hair, I worked on the background.
Kept it simple with a layer of pink.

I then returned to the hair, starting with more burnt umber in darker layers, then a highlight in grey, which was covered by black and blended till it looked natural like soft lighting on the glossy black hair.

With the hair done, I began to work on the chair portion.

Working on QQ at last, shading done with burnt umber, yellow ochre and black.

The doggy was done...

Last thing to paint was the red cushion under QQ.

I'm not good with brushes at all. Before one painting was done, the brushes were finished.

Last thing to do (and also the happiest) was to apply the varnish when the painting was dried. Two coats were applied. After first coating it was left to dry completely before the second coating was added. I used gloss varnish for this painting.

And here's the finished work. Sorry for the bad scanning.

The painting took about 48 hours to complete, spread across several months.

Acrylic paints dry kinda fast, and I was not very used to it because I am a slow worker. I found myself practically dry brushing the paint at several points of the painting just to get the effect I was looking for. I would very much prefer to blend instead. But I have a lot to learn, still, and may I overcome this in time.

I would love to learn how to do oil painting some day, if I live long enough to learn so slowly...

Thanks for looking!