Version 2.0

A week later, I have taken more time in making the outlines, doing the hair and now the results are there to see.

Previous drawing

Looking at it up close, you will notice the changes made to the way the hair is drawn. Although better than the first attempt, I feel the hair can be drawn better, as I started to realize how to shape it in the course of the drawing. In my next attempt I will be laying more focus on this. Also the eyes need a little more emphasis.

The other tools I have used this time is a mechanical pencil with a HB lead and a Cretacolor Monolith eraser. Unfortunately the search for good 2B and 4B leads still continues.

Materials used: Fabriano Accademia Art Paper 300 GSM
Cretacolor Cleo Graphite Art Pencils - 8B, 4B, HB, 2H, Paper stumps
Cretacolor Monolith Eraser
Staedtler Mechanical Pencil 0.5mm HB
Date: 25.07.2015
Time taken: 7 Hours, over 3 days.

A new beginning!

It has been about 20 years since I had lost my touch with pencils. Something that seemed to be very much my thing, suddenly had been forgotten for the years to come. My wife found some of my earlier sketches a few years ago and tried to coax me into doing a sketch of our son, but somehow I never had the inclination to do it.

Sketching came to me like everything else, from my elder brother. I watched him for a long time and took it as a challenge like most siblings do and went on with it. Most of my school and college day sketches were a bit dull and flat as I was no good at recreating tones, till one day a friend of mine, took a copy of my drawing and added tones to it. The sketch of Madhuri Dixit had suddenly started to come to life. He showed me some of his sketches and I was awestruck. We lost touch after a while and I haven't heard of him again. Those were the days when mobile phones and social networking were still a distant dream.

A month ago, my younger cousin suddenly posted an oil painting he had done and as we were discussing how it could be better, my mind slowly travelled to the days where I would sit glued to the table and sketching in the middle of the night. I decided I would have to give it a try and so started reading up as much as I could. With e-commerce booming, I found a website online that could cater to all I needed, professional art pencils, paper and much more. A week later, I had everything I needed and just the push to start.

It turned out to be a dull day on Saturday with not much work to do and here's what I ended up doing in 6 hours, non stop.

There are plenty of mistakes to go by. The bridge of the nose and the left eye, the slightly longer left ear. I would put this down to fatigue and losing focus. It would always be better to stagger your work over a few days spending an hour or two each day rather than trying to finish it in a hurry. No erasers have been used. As a first attempt, I am giving myself a break. I plan to keep drawing this same image each time and improve on it as I go. 

Materials used: Fabriano Accademia Art Paper 300 GSM

Cretacolor Cleo Graphite Art Pencils - 6B, 4B, 2B, HB, 2H, Paper stumps

Date: 18.07.2015

Time taken: 6 Hours, Nonstop.

Purchased from: www.creativehands.in