Baby Portrait Grandaughter - Rough Sketch

I have transferred the image to the watercolor paper using a home-made graphite paper. I use the premade paper for painting as the lines are harsher and I have learned the hard way if you are going to transfer an image using the premade paper, you better intend to draw darkly and be very committed to the rough sketch!

By making my own graphite transfer paper I do not need to worry about the harsh lines and the transfer paper is reusable many times. I took a photo of the portrait so far and have adjusted the values in photoshop so that the lines are more clearly visible. The actual portrait is much lighter

in real life.

Life Drawing Sketch

This is a quick, 15 minutes quick, sketch of a friend of mine from Suite E Life Drawing group. We decided to take a night and do 15 minutes portrait sketches of each other and it was a blast. We all took turns 'modeling' and the other frantically sketched until the timer went off. We kept rotating the groups so we all got a variety of subjects and the class flew by!

I was thoroughly exhausted by the end of the evening but I hope we do it again soon as it was great practice!

Dog Portrait Commission Munsterlander Sketch

This is the outline sketch of Murphy, a beautiful Munsterlander dog that I will be painting as a monochromatic watercolor. I have done the sketch small and will enlarge it then transfer it to the watercolor paper.

I usually start out with a large sketch but I wanted to keep it small to ensure that I caught all the details as the photo is blurry. I think I have captured his personality already though even with the limited detail.

The eyes I had to 'feel out' as in the photo they are in total shadow but he seems like a loyal intelligent dog so I hope that I have caputured that in his face and eyes.

Father's Day Commission - Father & Son Outline

This is the rough sketch of the father with his son. There is still much to be done to bring life to the portrait. The eyes already twinkle even at this stage. The eyes are my favorite part of the portrait to draw, I used to spend hours just drawing eyes :) My teachers used to think it was a waste of time but I think it was time very well spent!

1st Wedding Anniversary Graphite Portrait

This is the graphite sketch for a commission that will be a gift for a first wedding anniversary. I was not able to capture all of the portrait with my scanner as it is 11x14 and my scanner...even though it says it scans A4...seems to not want to go larger than 8.5 x 11 argh, may be time for a new scanner ;)

I have transferred the drawing onto the watercolor paper and have darkened the outline of the bride and groom with HB graphite pencil. The background is hard to see right now but is sand and rocks with will be loosely drawn in.

Custom Graphite Portrait - sketch

This is the sketch for a custom graphite portrait I have just started. It is a very rough outline at this point as I am working from several reference photos. The quality of the photos are poor so it is a bit of a challenge but the concept is quite cool and the main reference photo has great lights and darks and she has such a sweet smile that even at this very rough stage she brightens up my canvas.

I am still working out how the hair will fall, how the eyes will look as in the reference photo the eyes are open and some other details need to be addressed but they will sort themselves out as I go. The words Happiness, Peace, Comfort, Understanding and Beauty will be slightly hidden throughout the portrait as well which will be very cool. I will wait until the portrait takes a bit more shape before I decide where each word will be drawn.

Anniversary Graphite Portrait - Initial Sketch

This is the initial sketch for the portrait. I darkened the scanned image in photoshop as the actual lines are quite light. I tried to add a fair bit of detail this time at this stage as a bit of a 'road map'. I used an HB graphite pencil for this stage as it blends in easily so that the lines will not be visible later.