August 9th - introduction

Itroducing the process:

What am I doing?
I’m drawing a portrait of Uruha [the guitarist of a Japanese band The Gazette] and writing this journal throughout the process.
How ?
I’m using one sheet of standard A4 printer paper, pencils 2H, 2B, 4B, 5B & 6B, a mechanical pencil with 07 HB leads, toilet paper [for blending!! xD] , eraser. I’m also using the picture below this for reference.



I apologise in advantage for the poor quality of the pictures. xD .. you can always click to see them bigger. :]

August 9th 2010
I started making a rough sketch using my H2 pencil. For sketching I edited the reference picture a bit, adjusted brightness and contrast and played a bit with curves so the picture looks like the picture above... ..Okay lol I just couldn’t resist, ignore it, please.. xD



It took about a couple of hours to get it to the point in picture 1. I used some crosshatching to mark the areas that were going to be black or very dark and some of the shadows as well. This way I also got a good idea of the picture as whole. I thought it might help me because I wanted to try drawing in a different way compared to how I usually work. Instead of working on the whole picture I was going to proceed from the upper left towards the lower right corner of the picture to avoid messing the drawing with my hand while working on it. I think it’s unevidable since there are so many black areas in the picture that might easily mess the lighter parts if I wasn’t very careful..

The 2H, which is the hardest pencil I use, looks really light and grey instead of black so it’s best for sketching like this because it blends nicely with softer and darker pencils and can be almost completely erased if needed.

When I was satisfied with the sketch, I started working with the hair in the upper left corner of the picture. For the hair I used the 2H and some softer pencils, 2B and 4B. [More accurate explanation about drawing hair later...! xD ] I coloured the part of the background and some of his sleeve, as seen in the picture 2. I also drew some basic shadows and features on his face, just because I couldn’t stand looking at a drawing with so unfinished face... xD

to be continued..