I'm not quite ready to start the Santiago's second painting. I need to enlarge some pictures and work out some details still. So, while I'm getting motivated for all that, I started a drawing that was owed to my aunt forever ago. It's a baby portrait. She's no longer a baby... that was probably five years ago or so, but hey... better late than never. For portraits, no matter what the medium, I do a grid. (Unless it's on ornaments. I haven't been able to figure out how to grid on a curved surface yet). This lets me get proportion as exact as I can and lets me avoid someone saying things like: "That doesn't look like my kid..." behind my back. It's been a while since I've done a graphite portrait. G
enerally what ends up happening is me using one of the 20 or so pencils I have and not getting much of a shading range. Sometimes, I don't even draw with fancy drawing pencils and I whip out a good ol' mechanical. This time, I want to use as many different kinds of graphite as I can. I started with the hardest graphite because it's easiest to erase and makes very light lines. The darkest shade is 8B and will only be used for the deepest shades. I got to try out chamois for shading the skin and I gotta say, it's much better than the tissues I was using in the past. It gives a nice smoothness to skin without looking streaky or like the baby's face is dirty. My main problem with portraits like these is not making the picture dark enough. So when I work on this piece, I'll focus on that. As one of my art teachers once told me concerning graphite: "Don't be afraid of the dark!"
enerally what ends up happening is me using one of the 20 or so pencils I have and not getting much of a shading range. Sometimes, I don't even draw with fancy drawing pencils and I whip out a good ol' mechanical. This time, I want to use as many different kinds of graphite as I can. I started with the hardest graphite because it's easiest to erase and makes very light lines. The darkest shade is 8B and will only be used for the deepest shades. I got to try out chamois for shading the skin and I gotta say, it's much better than the tissues I was using in the past. It gives a nice smoothness to skin without looking streaky or like the baby's face is dirty. My main problem with portraits like these is not making the picture dark enough. So when I work on this piece, I'll focus on that. As one of my art teachers once told me concerning graphite: "Don't be afraid of the dark!" 
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