I’m in the middle of a particularly challenging project for my ink class, which has been weighing down my self confidence and general mood for the last three days. I decided that since I would probably feel like crap about whatever I drew anyway, I should use the time to do some studies. And thank GOD I did because this was so rewarding. I’ve been feeling iffy about my facial construction foundations for a while now, and I honestly feel like this helped so much.
There are four different exercises in here. First, I traced over five faces, adding construction lines. Next, on five different faces, I traced the construction lines and marked some key points, then I tried replicating the photograph as exactly as possible without tracing using that framework. I overlaid that onto the photo to see where I was deviating from the correct anatomy, and traced over it again taking special note of those areas.
The next exercise was attempting to replicate the photo as exactly as possible using no previously traced foundation. Once that was done, I again overlaid it on the photograph and did a corrective tracing (this one was the hardest). Finally, I did stylized drawings of some faces to help integrate everything into my style. The last drawing is a cooldown portrait of an OC, no reference.
Overall this took like 5 hours, but I feel really good. I want to do some neck and shoulder studies next :)
