A portrait of a Steemian, @angiechin28. I completed this sketch last Saturday, a day before our Team Malaysia Babes gathering. Angie requested I sketch this portrait a couple of weeks ago but I hurt my finger and had to rest my right hand for about a week and avoid applying too much pressure on the injured finger. Thank God portrait sketching is my forte and I am confident that I could finish this sketch within a couple of hours. And I did.
In the past, some people have suggested to me to try my hand on digital art. The only digital art skill I have is to digitized or vectorized my line art for my coloring books. This is a skill I had to learn when I was working on those books. Being a self-taught artist, it took me about a month to learn the most basic things like the type of images (raster or vector), basic Photoshop and Illustrator, and so on. It was all a different new world for me and it was hard but I was very determined to publish my books and I knew I had learned those basic skills no matter how hard. But to go shift to digital art entirely? Nope, I am not ready and here's why.
- I am too in love with traditional art
- I love working on paper and the smell of the paint and get my hands dirtied
- I love collecting (or hoarding) art supplies
And most of all, traditional artworks are not perfect. You can see my mistakes in every single piece of my paintings. They are REAL and with FLAWS, like me. But despite those mistakes, they are still beautiful, don't they? It's like us humans, despite our weaknesses, there is still something inherently good within each one of us, don't you think so? I like to think so.
I would love to try my hands on digital art someday but for now I am having so much fun with traditional art, I am not making that switch so soon.
The sketching process
Angie gave me this reference photo. To sketch a portrait, you must have a clear reference photo. Before I agree to accept a commission job, I always tell my clients to give me a clear reference image. A blurry photo is hard to work with and the portrait will not be satisfactory because I could not see and sketch the details accurately.
The next step is to sketch the outline of the face. This is the most crucial step. I have to sketch each facial feature in the correct proportion or else they will not achieve the likeness I desire. Once I sketched the outline, I started to shade the hair. I used 8B pencil for the darkest sections and 2B for the lightest sections.
Once the hair is done, I shaded the forehead. The most important thing to remember when shading the skin is to make the comparison between the skin tones and shade accordingly. Depending on the person's skin tones, for someone who is fair like Angie, I typically use 2B pencil for the darker tone and HB pencil for the lighter tone.
Next are the brows and the eyes. Eyes are the most important feature of the face. To achieve the likeness, the eyes must be at least 90% accurate. The highlights must be in the accurate spots or else the eyes will become squinty.
To sketch the nose, I must compare the skin tones around the nose and shade it accordingly. Once I finished shading the nose, I erased the nose outline to achieve the 3D and realistic look.
And finally, I sketched the lips, the cheeks, and her blouse.
Here is the completed portrait!
I gave this portrait to Angie during the Team Malaysia Babes gathering. I was having so much fun during the event, I almost forgot to pass it to her LOL!
Thank you for visiting! What do you think of this portrait? Please leave your comments below.
My previous posts:
Team Malaysia Babes First Ever Gathering
MyJuniors | Saturday Is Coloring Day
Art Explosion Week 29 | Awakening
Daily Devotional | Why Job Remained Silent?
The Strange Lighthouse And My Memories
I am selling some of my paintings over on Artfinder. Shipping is FREE worldwide. You can check them out here: ARTFINDER.
My gifts & merchandise available at REDBUBBLE (international), Printcious & CreativeUnited (Malaysia).
Thank you!
My avatar was illustrated by @pinstory
