Yes, I have continued working on Gesture Portraits. I decided I’m going to do them until the completion of my black sketchbook. I don’t know how many more that is, but it seems right that they should all be contained in the same book together.

This morning, as I was in the middle of drawing, I had a little visitor.

Now has she progressed into a blending stump and a bookmark.

And the final pose of, “Now you can’t possibly pay more attention to this than me.” Note the drawn face being unceremoniously sat upon by a careless kitty. She has no remorse.

So, that was the first twenty minutes of my drawing session today…yay, pets!

Now, onto the actual drawing part.

I have done three every day over the last three days. I feel as if I haven’t learned much in getting better at it, but I have noticed some style changes. My drawings seem to have gotten tighter. My original lines are getting closer to correct approximations, especially skull and hairline. I do feel as if I have been struggling with facial features such as the lips and levelness of the eyes.

I have started to draw some preliminary measurements regarding the eyes, but it doesn’t seem to be helping me much, yet. I changed pencil brands once during a session, and that had an effect on some drawings. Two sessions were at night, one session was during the day. Time does make a difference—it’s easier to draw when I’m not expecting sleep. I feel as if I have taken some steps backward in these sessions. The line is tighter, my drawings seem to be changing to be more “studies” rather than “gesture.” I’m not going to fight that much, if I get to approach drawing feeling open and with a low-barrier, that’s really what I’m going for. The rest will work out over time, and with practice.

Now to the drawings! (19-27)

Portrait 19

The head shape looks good. The tightness of my line work is obvious. I see that sifting lip line and nose. This is a difficult pose, I’m surprised I got this as aligned as I did, even though it needs correction.

Portrait 20

That left eye! Ahh! But the nose and lips are decent. The overall facial shape is odd. But once again, this is a tough orientation, and it would take more time to get it right, I think.

Portrait 21

Facial shape is a little off, but fairly okay. The hairline is going well. Line is tight, but in this instance, I think it works. I chose another difficult orientation, and executed it reasonably well, given the time and limitation.

Portrait 22

This drawing does look more like a study. Easily my favorite of last three sessions. The eyebrows are off, but the alignment is almost correct. I think I captured the model fairly well in this sketch.

Portrait 23

That left eye is off. Nothing is really working for me in this sketch.

Portrait 24

Lines got darker and heavier. Some features are askew. But this is looking a lot more like a study.

Portrait 25

The nose is not aligned, eyes are making an effort, the lips are not lined up. The jawline is strange. I have no idea what happened, this is my freak show of the session.

Portrait 26

Another difficult tilted-head orientation. Eyes and nose are fairly okay. Lips are just goofy. Hairline is acceptable.

Portrait 27

Nose and lips are not aligned correctly, and that left eye is loo large. But, the eye plane is accurate, and I just love the facial expression.

So, I have very mixed feelings about this set of drawings. It is interesting to me that my form has tightened, and I have started to become more interested in the detailed shading accuracy of lips and noses. Also, that I tried to align eyes has changed some measurement focuses in the drawings, sometimes with successful results, and sometimes with strange orientation results. I am hoping that in time I will be able to perform more accurate measurements faster, and to do shading of features with enough success to capture the model’s representation.

How have your exercises and creative practices been going? I know that I’m not doing Inktober, I’ve been more doing FaceTober or Pentober or Graphtober. But this is working for me. It’s been nice to see results from effort applied.

Wishing you results and progress,

Gesture Portraits 19-27