Hello my friends!
I do indeed acknowledge that my posting has been quite rare if non-existent for the past few months, but I am quite ready for a fresh start now. See, it is not at all like I have not been busy or any funky business as such but I actually have experienced a great change in my life: I packed my belongings, said my goodbyes to several beloved friends and just about picked up and left all the way to the other side of the world - to Pennsylvania, United States. Now most of my readers probably know by now that I am from a small country called Finland, that most people around here don't even know where it is or what the people who live in such a country are called: Finland-ese, they said.
Moreover, now I live in the United States as I had always hoped for with my beloved family and I am rapidly moving towards my goals of getting into a well established art college in the hub of illustration - Philadelphia.
Now, even though I've been extremely busy just getting used to counting pennies, nickles and quarters I have indeed gotten a few projects started. I have not yet finished Caminito (actually I started working on it again just last night) that featured in my most recent post for you see I had to pack my computer away for shipping and I was only reunited with my computer and tablet about a week ago. What I have done is a request work for an old dear friend from school in graphite which I will get into for you today.
So. What was my requested project, you ask? Johnny Depp. Yes, I wasn't too happy about it since of course everyone knows what Johnny Depp looks like and if I were to mess up EVERYONE will notice it. However, she seemed happy with it so I won't complain it was for her after all. I started with a image of her choosing and roughly sketched out the figures I was dealing with, breaking down the whole photograph into lines and circles.
Here we go. The outline is established and I have started working on the loose, woven hat Depp is wearing. I can't say it wasn't a struggle trying to make that hat look woven - at least in any credible fashion - but since it is not the focal point in the work I thought I could leave it more blurred off in order to limit the 'eye attraction' factor, if you will.
After finishing the woven hat, I begin to work my way downward to the forehead and eyes as well as making sure everything is proportioned correctly checking my image as I go along to make sure my values are correct. For the forehead, first I get the shade of grey I'm in want of and then start working on the shine and shades that Depp's bone structure as well as his hat creates.
Here we can see that I have begun working on the right eye and started coloring in Depp's dark, almost black, hair. I also worked on the eyebrows making sure that my pencil stays nice and sharp to obtain that 'hair' texture. It was nice and easy working on Depp's eyebrows since they were bushy and dark, making it easy to find the correct value and opacity of...eyebrow.
I don't want to drag my explanations too long because it is mostly just finding correct values and keeping the 'Depp' look, which is difficult to distinguish at the moment.
As some of you may know, eyes are always difficult to work on since it can be a taxing labor to try and make the eyes look 'real' per say and keeping them in line with each other. I had great difficulty finding the correct perspective with the eyes on Depp since it really did feel like they were an unmatched pair, even in the photograph itself which I do not have at the moment, unfortunately. I kept working on the eyes for a week straight as I continued working my way down Depp's face and I still do slightly feel as though they would need more work but what can I say, sometimes you just run out of time and works will always have some imperfections, right?
Unfortunately I was too dumb to actually take more pictures of my process such as with the mouth, chin, hair, mustache etc but all in all I felt as though it went quite smoothly: I started out with subtle colors and worked my way towards darker colors in order to create that contrast that is needed in any work.
And here we go. A snapshot of the pretty-much-finished work. Off to the balcony and we are finished and ready to showcase to the customer!
Above is a snapshot from the balcony, a work ready for it's coat of fixative before it's final photo shoot for portfolio purposes and to be sent to my customer.
And voila! As for my first graphite pencil portrait of a celebrity it was received quite well among my viewers. This portrait took about a week and a half of work to finish with my limited schedule, but I do believe I learnt quite a bit from the experience. It was a pleasant change of paste from the constant work on the computer, something I felt like I really needed to do to get away from my latest, extremely colorful piece of work.
What I found difficult to obtain was the texture of Depp's skin, somehow he has very grainy skin in the photograph I used and I found creating that effect being quite challenging. You can see my efforts on the right cheek, but mostly as I tried to create that texture it came out as blotchy, instead of grainy. Perhaps I need more practice in that department; however, otherwise it was a pleasant change to draw wrinkles and signs of aging on an individual, something I haven't done or explored upon before.
As for today, I thought I would only explore on this work and leave my other beginnings of several works for another day just to keep this post within a readable length. So tune in till next time! I will be picking up on my work nowadays since I have until February 1st to finish my portfolio for the most prominent art colleges in the area, a pressure that I have found to be both positive and negative.
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