Video: Custom Drawing of Grand Daughter Adaira
- vickiknoll
- Jan 12, 2024
- 2 min read
My Favorite Subjects to Draw
Custom Drawing my grand daughters brings me pure joy. As I'm drawing, I think about how precious they are and what they were doing at the time when the photo was taken.
Techniques
When I first start a drawing, I lightly draw the outline of every detail that's important. (I say important because sometimes not everything needs to be drawn at this stage. Like every little line in a sweater or every strand of hair.) There are many ways to transfer your photo image on your drawing paper and I'll explain those in another post.
The next step is to lightly draw the shading and darken the features of the face. I use a #2 graphite drawing pencil. You don't want to make this step too dark because if there's a mistake, you want to be able to erase the problem. To do the shading, I hold the pencil at an angle to get more coverage with the side of the graphite on the end of the pencil.
I then use a blending stump to smooth out all of the shaded areas. I use a large one for the large areas of the face and a small one for small areas like around the eyes. You lightly rub the areas in circular motions so you don't see noticeable lines. Sometimes lines can't be avoided, but that's why I do the next step.
The next step seems like a waste of time and effort, but it's really necessary to achieve smooth, flawless areas. I use a kneaded eraser and lightly erase everything. How I do this is, I stretch the eraser out so it's soft and flexible. I then shape it into a large soft ball and press on the drawing, I continue pressing the eraser on all the areas of the drawing. I'll continue stretching out the eraser in between presses so I don't recover the areas with the graphite that is picked up on the eraser.
Now I'm ready to fill in all the details and complete the drawing. I use a soft 8B graphite pencil and draw and shade all of the dark areas to make them pop. As I'm doing this, I'll smooth areas again with a blending stump and use a kneaded eraser if some areas get too dark.
Practice, Practice, Practice
I hope you have all enjoyed my little tutorial and video. Just remember, no artist was born with all of their skills. They observed and learned techniques and they practiced, practiced, practiced.
Please leave comments below to let me know if you liked this post and if you have any suggestions for future posts or questions. See you soon!
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