I’m going to do something this weekend that could go horribly wrong, but then, I’ve already convinced myself that it can only succeed because it can’t fail as it’s already failed lolI’ve spent so many hours on this drawing (above) for Art Class, but today I am going to erase pretty much the lower half of her face and try to piece it all back together! The drawing is an A3 (bigger then A4 scares me lol) portrait drawing that is out of my comfort zone …My Art Teacher wanted me to rescale a drawing from a smaller reference image (only do that in my sketchbook), no guidelines for the lineart (only do this for non portrait drawings and stuff in my Sketchbook) and the image has a face at a really strange angle with her main features covered by hair. It’s tough for me! I started to render the facial features properly last weekend, and I convinced myself that the nose was too long … I stared at the drawing for so long that I felt kinda crazy. So I ended up going in and out of the room looking at it every 10 minutes or so with fresh eyes trying to see what was really wrong, because while I felt the nose was wrong, I wasn’t totally sure.

I decided to just carry on rendering her face in the hopes it would come together down the line, in my heart of hearts I knew it wouldn’t, but I still just carried on. The more I rendered though, the more her face really bothered me, I then went to Art Class on Tuesday and my Art Teacher said a few things that really hit me round the head in a good way.

My Art teacher said many things, but the main thing that stuck with me were that her left eye was angled wrong together with too small an Iris and that in the reference photo she looks young and sexy but on my drawing she looks old, when my Art teacher said that I just thought “you’ve nailed it, you’ve just said what I’ve been thinking all this time but couldn’t put into words” … this was what had been bothering me all weekend, she didn’t look young and sexy. It was just what I needed to hear, because I want her to look young and sexy so instantly my brain was like, “I’m gonna bloody fix this drawing” lol

I had half noticed that her left Iris was too small, but not that the angle was wrong…so I spent the next 2 hours at Art Class fixing the eye and then when I got home I started to play around with the right eye, cos I could now see that was slightly wrong too, her eyes are still very much WIP! Like a jigsaw puzzle though, as soon as I started changing the eyes, everything started to show itself and reveal the true errors. I noticed that the side of her face was at the wrong angle, I had been so fixated on her nose being wrong, that I was ignoring where the real problem was.

It was like an AhHa moment. So, I can now clearly see that I need to erase the mouth, and the tip of the nose and basically move everything up and to the right by an inch or two. The eyes look really wrong at the moment, but it’s more that everything else is wrong :) In a strange way, it’s a good thing I didn’t erase the nose last weekend as I don’t think that would have fixed it, it’s all to do with the angles. The thing is, I can see how risky it is to change this now because of the amount of rendering I’ve done and that bit of hair that is going across her mouth.

So it may not work, I’ve calculated a 30% success rate lol I’m going to try my best and I just keep saying to myself, “she doesn’t look right now and no matter how much I try to render the rest of her nicely, it will not make her look as sexy as in the reference photo so you have nothing to lose”.

Therefore, today I’m going to take an eraser to her, starting at the point where her chin starts to curve up, as I think this line will define everything else. Luckily I should be able to just go darker and shouldn’t notice that too much, but it’s moving her mouth up that I’m fearing, and also the paper around her nose is already a bit weak as I had trouble trying to get her nose right the first time.

Well, my Art Teacher said to me that you learn the most from your mistakes, but I’m determined to try and fix and make her look sexy! I’m both excited and scared, which as Jonathan Rector said on one of his podcasts, when you feel like that, it normally means you’ve got to just do it. If it does go horribly wrong, I will not be upset, I’ve learnt so much from this drawing already it’s insane and I’d much rather risk destroying the past 60+ hours of drawing if there is even a small chance of success, rather then keep her as she is and not being happy.