Chuotanhls - Portrait Study

This is step-by-step process of my portrait sketch of Chuotnhls. The purpose of this portrait study is to improve my values and lighting based on feedback of my previous work.

Chuotnhls

This photo shows an Asian girl dressed in a white shirt under strong lighting off the top left. The challenge here is rendering the female face without losing the contrast between light and shadow. In addition, the white shirt's value easily blends with the skin.

Draft

I began the draft by positioning the head in the ideal composition on paper. Then, with the loomis method, recreate the head in a 3-quarter angle with a slight tilt. Then I took a soft approach for the rest of the head; Squinting and making educated guesses of where the facial features are.

Lay-In

At the lay-in stage, I quickly separated the major light and shadows with the shading technique using a 6B pencil held with an overhand grip. Everything is kept light at this point to give me room for any mistakes.

Shading

I used the shading stage to quickly fill up the page with the corresponding values, while, making minor adjustments to any proportional errors I encountered. 

Smudging

The smudging technique is applied here to help me recreate smooth facial, fabric textures quickly. It's also very helpful at filling in white gaps in the hair area, allowing me to push its values even darker.

Then I used a small eraser to re-establish the highlights. The sketch is now ready for the refinement stage.

Final

The refinement stage took the longest. Here I start establishing the details of the face and gradually work outward.  I used the hatching technique to emphasize form and unite the whole drawing into one piece.

I think I'm overall satisfied with the final result. The finished piece does lack a certain likeness to the original photo. I'd assume the eyes are a little bit high. But I think I accomplished the correct values and lighting. Although the lighting in the photo isn't particularly complex.