Critique on 3 finished portraits

We had our critique on Monday on our three portrait drawings. Although I had pretty much finished the portraits in class during the three hours a day we could spend on them, I did come to class about 30mns early to do some touch up details and view them all together next to each other on the wall.

Once we started the critique, some of the same comments came up over and over again. Some people had trouble with the hair, almost everyone had trouble with proportions of the features of the face at some point, and some parts of peoples’ drawings were flattened out with either a straight line, or no shading/suggestion of light and space. The drawings I liked the most were the ones that were unique, compositionally sound, and had a lot of movement in their marks. I felt that those drawings, even if some proportions were off, looked more like completed resolved art and were the most interesting to look at.

I think my critique went fairly well, and I think people could tell I was proud of these drawings. The one I had the hardest time on was the right drawing in the image above, because the angle was so strange! But to combat this, I used the box/cube technique and mapped out the shape and angle of the skull within this box before turning it into an actual face, which I think really helped me. However, because I was working on this one drawing for so long (this one took me the longest), I think out of the three it seems the least finished.

With all three of these drawings I started out with vine charcoal first to map everything out lightly, and then drew back in with conté crayon to up the contrast and dimensionality, and improve my line quality. Some of the things I heard in critique were: the delicacy of the lines in the hair was really nice, the sharp contrast looked good to create dimensionality, the forms seemed to be rendered accurately, the chin on the middle drawing seems a little disproportionate, and in the most right drawing the pillows behind the figure seem off/unfinished.

being sick and drawing people

It’s always so nice to be sick and have to go to school. Haha. This year definitely goes on record for the most times I have been sick in a series of weeks. I’m finally off antibiotics for the first time in a month and half for the three bouts of Strep I had—THREE! (Don’t worry my parents bought me an air-purifier for my basement bedroom, which they think will solve the problem) But of course right after I got off my antibiotics my immune system was so down that I was immediately hit with this flu/cold thing that has been going around all of my roommates in my house. I was feeling so bad that I had to miss class on Wednesday and pretty much slept & took medicine all day long :( Its unfortunate that I had to miss class because we are still doing these portrait drawings and it is almost detrimental to miss class because these drawings have to take place in class and of classmates. It worries me because I don’t know how I’m going to be able to make up that drawing unless one of my classmates is willing to pose for 3 hours on another day of the week…

Our project is due this Wednesday, and I have one of the three portraits almost completed. On Monday last week I worked on my 3/4^th front view of Missy, which was actually surprisingly a lot harder than I thought it would be. Above is how it turned out. At the end of class Amy showed me a few tips that will help me finish this piece, mostly having to do with the eyes and light and shadow. I think once I add those parts, this drawing will be done! I think the accuracy of proportions of the whole face is pretty good and it also doesn’t hurt that it actually kinda looks like her… !! :) I’m excited to pump out the last two drawings and see how everyone else’s turned out during critique on Wednesday!