I had been having a craving for drawing something since last few days, I came accross Deepika Padukone's picture in Tanishq's facebook feeds and I printed out the picture for reference. When I eventually sat down to do it, my husband insisted I draw something else, something more inspiring than beautiful looking hair, very tempting to draw.
The next one I chose to do was a cartoon featuring the popular Disney characters Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald etc. And the response I got from my husband when I showed him what I was planning to do was "If I had your kind of talent, I wouldnt do cartoons when I had a craving for drawing" :) After some pondering I settled on a picture of myself. I have never done one of my own. The reason why I selected the below image of myself was because the hair seemed interesting(I love to draw hair :) I think it is evident by now) and I wasnt sure if I would be able to do the sun glasses.
When I started, I did not have a printed picture and my first attempt was by looking into my iphone 4! The first outline sketch that I came up with did not capture the correct tilting of the face and the sun glasses, so I went to bed feeing low and dissapointed, as this was my first attempt at a portrait in more than 2 years!
Yesterday, when I sat again to do it, I had a printed copy of the picture :) I always print the picture I am going to draw in gray scale because it gives me idea of the depth of shading I should do. I ended up at this stage after 20 mins using HB.
I was happy with the tilt of the head and started with the hair, I usually do the hair in 2B first and then move to the face, coming back to hair with darker tones like 5B, 6B and usually end in 8B. I also use, click pencils a lot of times to do the finer things.
A first layer of the hair done and the rest of the drawing a little highlighted. Next I started with the sun glasses and at this stage I was a little confused as to what level of darkness should my first layer of the frame be? As I knew I had to show it visible agianst the hair, I decided to keep it a level darker than the hair from the start. I used 3B.
Taking a closer look at the reflection in the sun glass, I realised its going to be much more difficult to do it justice than I had anticipated. Nevertheless, here's a comparison of the actual picture and the drawing. There is considerable size difference. I will upload a comparative picture in the end to show the proportions.
First level of shading done on the sun glasses and started to darken the hair.
Unfortunately, I only have the end result now, I got so engrossed that I didn't capture any more stages. I have applied 3 more layers of graphite to the hair and 2 more o the sun glasses. I was also hurrying a little by now because it was getting late in the night and the horror of waking up next morning for work makes me really spead up.
This is the one that I took in the morning in natural light, before leaving for work. And obviously, the first thing I did as soon as I got in the car was upload it to Facebook for my friends to see :) Some people actually come up with knowledgeable comments which helps me improve.
Thanks to my husband's support and appreciation and Very helpful reviews, I will continue to draw all my life :)
