Gordaen's Blog

I did not intend to do this portrait quickly, but my pencil broke just ten minutes into it. Obviously, that alone is not a big deal, but I had been frustrated by a variety of other things on the day I was doing this sketch, so that was just one more thing. I did not want to quit partway through the portrait, but I was too frustrated to spend the time it needed (another 45 minutes or more). I decided I would just finish the portrait as quickly as I could and call it good. This is the drawing that I ended up with after a total of twenty minutes.

For some reason (smoothness of the skin?), this drawing looks like it is of an Asian woman to me, but I based it on a sample portrait in the old book I have referred to a few times now. I believe that the woman in the book was white, though it was a pretty low quality black and white photograph. I ended up doing the majority of this with a 6B and smearing it with my finger, so its look is a bit different from the previous portraits. Experimentation is good, right?