Drawings

[Holly Snyder]

Hi,

Here are some sketches from a photoshoot with my neighbor. All are around 12"x16", on cheap paper, with HB, 4B pencils and a black conte pastel. I wasn't able to erase out the highlights bright enough in many cases, particularly in the catchlight of eyes, nor would white conte pastel work as the paper was too saturated. I'll have to try some better paper. I'm not happy with the first one, although I'm not sure why.

The point of these was to try and speed up my drawing, so that I can try drawing from life (in a reasonable amount of time).

Thanks for looking,

Holly

[Sharon Knettell]

[Sharon Knettell]

Holly,

I especially like the third one down. Personally I am a very pokey drawer.

[Michele Rushworth]

I like the third one also.

On the first one the back of the skull doesn't look large enough. The left edge of the hat and hair seem like they need to be moved an inch or so further left.

[Jimmie Arroyo]

I like the third one also, but like the last a bit more. They have a very loose feel from photos, if you had said they were from life, I'd believe it.

[Holly Snyder]

Thanks Sharon, Michele and Jimmie for the comments. Jimmie you made me smile.

Cheers,

Holly

[Patricia Joyce]

Hi Holly,
I really like the last one the best. The form is really good and I like the looseness of it. I agree with Michelle with the proportion of the first drawing.

Can I ask you how long it did take you to do these? To be accurate, it takes me hours to draw the contour correctly.

[Holly Snyder]

Thanks Pat. I checked the size of the hat/skull on the first one, and it is correct. To my surprise, that's the one the model liked best?! Ah well. These took from 2 - 5 hours each, hence my desire to speed up. I see videos by Richard Schmid, Daniel Greene, Michael Del Priore, Lajos Markos, etc, in which they get wonderful loose painted likenesses in a couple hours. Lajos Markos could do it in under an hour. Practice, practice, practice...