💐🎨Work in realism #3 - Finally a portrait and learning from the mistakes

Finally it was time to work with a portrait for these projects. A gift for everyone and for me, I liked pretty much the process and although the end had some ups and downs ... I think you better see it here.

For a long time we wanted to be requested a portrait, and for this the challenge was not to make any face, but that of a person of the third age; and that meant working with everything related to this, including wrinkles and brands ... Yes, this is where everything stretched to almost twice the time ... but allowed us to learn more about shapes, shadows and values.

And taking this opportunity of not only working with something of interest such as the portrait in realistic paintings but also with a material very used, I wanted to make a small addition of errors ... Okay capital sins that I have committed in their moments too.

The materials used were pencils H, B2, B4, B6 and B8

Time to start with the deadly sins

Here I want to take advantage of talking about many processes and ideas that could be of help to my art colleagues: both tricks as mistakes that many would feel related to (even I had a lot to rethink when the teachers told us what NOT to do for this work)

WP_20180411_19_05_28_Pro (2).jpg

Like everything, the important thing is to mark as clearly as possible; and with the pencil as finest as possible from start to finish. Do not stain the sheet prematurely, mark gently, there will be many ways to ruin the paper in the future.

The white sheet and the treacherous hand.

Starting from the top is a recommendation to avoid staining or damaging the rest of the paint, and I think many of us can relate to that mistake of supporting the palm with the work and end up staining everything from one moment to another. As options we have: supporting the little finger as support (my favorite), use a paper or always start the upper left area and go from there to the lower right side.

The white sheet and the treacherous pencils.

We should never forget to use the pencils with the finest possible tips: the paper has a limit of how much it can stand, and when it is not able to hold more it is considered "burned". When the tip is not thin, you get to burn the paper much faster than expected (I made the mistake to forget this when I was with the background...)

The white sheet, and keep those hands and cottons away!!!

When it comes to shadow people has a very common but erroneous idea (no, simply no!>: C, move away those fingers, cottons and papers>: c) the shadows are not always meant to be faded. The work is to degrade using pencils, "H" the most recommendable (minor to this is practically an exact with black tip). The reason for this is that blurring a lot the shadow only makes the work stained or dirty. As in this process, the blurring was done calmly, the lighter pencil degraded the darker pencils.

old woman.jpg

We should take care of the paper at all cost.

Details (and my own forgetfulness)

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, they are one of the parts that we must give more importance. They take time to be learned, but once we have them, the faces will have a great advance. Added: do not forget that eyes are spheres, therefore have the nature of a sphere.

The hair is something that can become very confusing, because it is believed that it has a nature opposite to the rest of objects, but in reality in the basics it comes to look very much like any object. As a good start it is good to make the hair as something solid, and after this make certain differences between the strands.

In the same way that when we work with clear areas with clear pencils, the darker areas are worked with darker pencils; as well as always keep the fine tip, this way the paper is able to support more without getting damaged. I made the mistake of not doing it here ...

You can also follow me on

Instagram Deviantart ArtStation