Face Time

In my determination to learn how to sketch people, I have read several books that have given me good training suggestions. I am especially interested in faces and expressions. Here are a few of the faces from the last couple of months.

Koh-I-Noor Tri-Tone pencil on Canson Black Paper

The book "How to Draw People" by Jeff Mellem advocates drawing a face map. Visualize a balloon with a rubber band around the equator to place the eye zone. The bottom of the nose is half way between the equator and the bottom of the balloon and the mouth is halfway between the nose and the chin at the bottom of the balloon.

I didn't get the map quite right, but the hypothetical child still looks better than my previous attempts.

Faces are very striking on black toned paper with metallic pencils. I love the way the eyes stand out. (Spectrum Noir metallic pencils and Canson Black paper).

The left face is Donnie, one of my grandcats. On the right are Sam and Ben faces. Below is baby Sam sketched from a photo.

One book with step by step instructions on drawing eyes is "Figure It Out! Simple Lessons, Quick Results" by Christopher Hart. The book's emphasis is on cartoon type figures, but the instructions on eyes have been helpful when drawing from photos. Here is a page of my notes from this book.

Another tooth bites the dust!
Exceed journal paper, colored pencils

And my latest sketch, from my bullet journal, of Sam, who is losing teeth.

Life changes

This month has meant upheaval for me. I am expecting new housemates in December. This will be for our mutual benefit, they need an affordable place to stay and I could use help with housing expenses. This house is twice the space that I need to live, but nature abhors a vacuum. In the last four years the three spare rooms have filled up with books, fabric, sewing machines, and yarn. Now I am reorganizing the entire house to empty those rooms and move materials to my remaining space. That is a good thing, but time consuming.

Painting walls gave me the thought that I would like to paint one wall with a dark blue paint that I bought cheap and paint jellyfishes in pink on top of the blue. Sam and I have practiced sketching jellyfish for that effort. The blue paper that I made some Inktober sketches on makes a good background for pink jellyfish.

Moon Jelly- colored pencils and ink on Blue Cartridge paper

I love this blue paper. It was a gift and has no labels to tell me where it was produced. The only label says "A5  cartridge ex col" over a bar code. A5 is the size, and cartridge is what drawing paper is termed in Britain and Europe. This paper has a enough tooth to use with pencils, but is thick enough so there is no bleed-through with any of the fountain pen inks I've used. I also have seen no feathering with fountain pen inks. Toned and colored papers are great fun! I am trying to figure out where to get more of this blue.

Sam's jellyfish and school pick-up practice
Blue Cartridge Paper and graphite pencil

When picking up my granddaughter at school, I try to practice figure sketching. However, children don't even hold a pose for 5 seconds, let alone 30 seconds! So I am reducing my practice to faces and hairstyles.

On a sad note, we lost Paris hamster last night. Her decline was sudden and unexpected. Sydney continues to be lively, but unfortunately, hamsters (like all small rodents) don't live long. The average lifespan is 2 years, but Sydney and Paris are just over 1 year old. I have no guess as to why Paris died.