In accordance with the plan, today I spent a few hours trying to draw the face of Maybe James Roday Rodriquez so that you could tell it was supposed to be a copy of that picture. I wasn't necessarily aiming to trick the viewer into believing that it was a photo - that's a super cool skill, but it's not one that I have or need. I just want you to be able to tell, when I draw a picture of a person, who that person is, to recognize the drawn face as meaning to represent the real or photographed face.

Anyhow, that meant a bunch of time today drawing this bust. I cropped away everything from the nipples down, and magnified the face and upper torso. Here's my drawing, next to the reference photo:

I have photographed my drawing and done this side-by-side comparison a dozen times now, and each time I notice something else that will help. Right now I see that his forhead should be angled a bit further downward, and should be a bit longer, the entire face a bit closer to the shoulder, the slope of the jaw steeper - to achieve those things, though, I would have to erase the ENTIRE FACE and start over. Those eyes (also not quite right) took forever to get even this close. Ditto the nose and the lips, both of which are also not quite right.

The lower lip needs to be thinner, which I guess I could achieve, but the entire mouth should have a slightly steeper downard slope. Changing the slope would mean starting over on the mouth.

The nose is pretty close to right. I can see that they aren't the same, but I am having trouble figuring out exactly what is different. Maybe it's right and just looks wrong because the face is a little wonky? 

The chest is more or less the right shape, but it should be wider, overlap the model's right arm (the arm on our left) to cover about half of the upper arm, which would broaden the chest, allowing me to move the sternum to the correct position, a bit to the left of where it is now. I could easily fix that, and maybe I will later, but today I really was concentrating on the face. The upper torso is really only there for reference, so I could get the head size and angle right relative to the body.

Anyway, I am not aiming to be a portraitist, but I do want to be able to reliably draw a character and have that character look the same each time, no matter what pose they are in. Lots and lots more practice needed here, although I do consider this drawing to be substantial progress. You can almost tell, I think, that the drawing is supposed to be of the photo. Here's a blow up of the equivalent part of the full-body drawing I did the other day:

So, I mean, Progress. I like this face, but it's sketchy, it doesn't even attempt to resemble the model, and the whole head is  a bit too small relative to the rest of the model (less obvious with this crop, but you can check it out in yesterday's post if you like).

With lots more practice, perhaps my drawings will be allowed to move away from the current apartments in the Uncanny Valley. 

Would LOVE to have advice from more accomplished portraitists.

Thanks!