What is it?

This is a graphite drawing on a piece of paper that is 9 by 12 inches. Depicted is what I consider to be a beautiful, attractive, young woman in a pose which captured my artistic attention.

Why?

I found a photograph of this girl in my travels and wanted to present her beauty in my own creative way. This drawing is a result of such, and I used the photograph I found as a reference.

I also am creating more graphite, realism pieces like this lately because I believe they will strengthen my artistic skill and capabilities. It’s not really my niche to work solely in realism, but I do think it will teach me something about artistic discipline as I continue to create more realistic pieces like this.

How?

Like all my portrait drawings, I start the piece with a basic outline of the subject I am drawing. I don’t have a photo of this piece’s outline, but here is an old photograph of a piece that is currently in progress. This gives you an idea of what the basic outlines I start with look like.

Here’s another example of a basic outline..

After the outline, I get to work on the shape of the face and usually try to pick one part of the face to focus on for a bit before working all over the piece. This gives me a more accurate foundation for me to base my details on.

Now that I’m fairly satisfied with the face I begin to shade below it.

Shading continues….

Now that I’ve nearly finished shading, I take some time to darken some areas and smooth out the shading. I also manage to bend the paper…lucky me, especially during the final stages in this piece’s creation. Ah well. I don’t get too worked up about mistakes anymore. Every artwork I’ve made is essentially a compilation of mistakes I eventually deemed adequate. You can quote me on that. In fact, I will quote myself on that.

And it’s done!

Conclusion

This piece was one of those pieces that wasn’t exactly easy nor too challenging. There will be more to come. Thanks for reading!