Drawing Best Friends

Usually when I choose faces to draw they are all serious looking with no visual teeth or smiles. The reason is naturally because it is easier to draw something plain without special edges and curves. This time I tried something different. I found a great photo of my sister in law Liselotte and her friend making funny faces, and I started drawing right away because of the inspiration and the challenge!

I used lead pencils to make this drawing and the range of softness lies between F to 6B. I used a stomp to make the shadows. 

If I would point out one thing I am the most satisfied with in this drawing, it would be how the tongue turned out because that part was really tricky! 

Ink Drawing Liselotte

The last couple of days I have had thoughts of starting to draw pictures agian. I really love drawing, especially human faces because of all the opportunities faces give, and I looked into my boxes with pencils and other drawing eqipment I have. I bought some Indian ink pencils in beige and brown colors a year ago but somehow I never used them. Today I used them for the veryfirst time and this drawing is my first attempt to make a Indian ink drawing. I made the first contours with ordinary lead pencils and then I just used my feelingshow it should be and colored as I went.

The girl in the picture is my sister in law Liselotte. She has a very unique face with strong details so it was fun to try to make the drawing look like her. I think I nailed some parts but for next time I will try to dare more with the colors around the cheeks and the nose because then I think the similarities with the original will be better :) I am really overwhelmed with these ink pencils and I will keep on using them in the future. For this drawing I only used four pencils: one black marker, and three ink pencils in light sand, dark beige and brown. I will buy some new colors, maybe some grey colors and white to get more possibilities. 

Drawing Meg Ryan

One of my favourite movies is "When Harry met Sally" starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal from 1989. I can't remember how many times I have seen that movie, probably fifteen times.
Meg Ryan's character Sally Albright is a lovable person and I wanted to make a drawing of her. The picture is taken right in the beginning of the movie when Sally is sixteen years old, waiting in her car for Billy Crystal's character Harry Burns to stop making out with his girlfriend so they can start their journey from Chicago to New York.

The technique I use is lead pencils with the softness between  3B and 5B. I also used a pencil with pin to get really sharp details around the eyes and in the hair. The paper is sketching paper.

There are some details I couldn't point my finger at that made the drawing not entirely looking like the original. I think I should have used the darker pencils like 5B and 6B much more to get a "wow-effect". However, I think it looks quite good when I am comparing it to the original picture.

Drawing Maleficent (Angelina Jolie)

The Walt Disney Pictures movie Maleficent is one of the latest Disney movies that I really enjoyed. Click here to learn more about this movie on IMDb. I think the story of this movie is a great twist to the old fairytale Cinderella when the witch is the bad guy and you never really know why. But in this movie you get to know her and even feel sympathy for her.
I think Angelina Jolie is a great actress and even if she is not my favourite I think she is giving this character full life.  

I made this drawing on ordinary sketch paper using lead pencils. I am not very fancy when it comes to lead pencils, I often use a bright pencil like B or F to do the contours at the first stages, fill them in with something in the middle like 2B or 3B to get the details and when I am done with that I get crazy with the black and use a 5B or 6B to color the real dark areas. When I started drawing many years ago I never dared to use the dark pencils because I was scared I would destroy the drawing I was happy with. That often resulted in pale motifs without the "wow-effect" - yes quite boring. Today I know that shadows and dark areas are the only true things that makes a drawing come to life! The goal I have with my drawings is to make the viewer feel invited to look at it more than just one time and I think I pulled it off quite good this time because of the shadows and her interesting eyes.

I almost always look at a real photo of the character I am drawing because I am not very good at seeing the person in my head. There are people who are amazing with the photograhic memory and I am deeply impressed with them, I can't understand how they do it. Anyway, I like using photographs because I get to really study the person's lines and characteristics in their faces. For instance, you look at a picture of Angelina Jolie and at first sight you think she must have a very straight and sharp nose or the lips and eyes have the same shape on both left and right side if you would divide her face in the middle. But no. There are many differences in her face and I if I had not payed attention to them I most definately would not had suceeded to make my drawing look like her. So my advice, if you would like any, is to look at the details and trust the differences you see, because if you just make assumptions without really looking you will fail with your work. I have made that mistake countless times.