For a while now I have been wanting to try my hand at portraiture, but fear has consistently got in the way.  I can draw a face, I wasn’t too worried about that…  It was making the face look like the person that I was drawing that I was terrified of not getting right! I also needed a subject I felt comfortable drawing for the first time. I didn’t want to start out with my family, I know their faces too well so I would nitpick my drawing to death, but I did want to draw someone I knew well enough so I was familiar with the face. The problem was I didn’t want to add pressure to my fears by telling Mom I wanted to try drawing their daughter so I had to organise a photo shoot of my intended subject on some pretext or another. A family full of photographers made this part easy, I just offered Phil’s services to take pictures of their daughter and told Phil before the shoot exactly what I was looking for. Once I got the photo I wanted he could send the rest to Mom! This way if it was successful it would make a lovely birthday gift, and if it wasn’t, I could bin the drawing and Mom would be none the wiser when I presented her with a bunch of flowers, and champers on her birthday!

Yes I definitely want to try more portrait studies. For now I will try to master the pencil medium first. Eventually I would like to move to paint…. Baby steps first! My ever persistent assistant who cannot seem to leave my drawings alone! The tools…. A selection of monolith graphite pencils from 2B to 9B, though for this study I didn’t use more than a 6B and concentrated mainly on the 3B and 4B pencils to execute the portrait. A craft knife which I used to slice the eraser in order to create a sharp corner for ‘drawing’ in the hair highlights and blending stumps. One of my challenges was to make a two year old look like a two year old rather than a miniature adult. To do this I tried to soften the mouth, show a hint of two little teeth, and simplify the eyes to light and dark to create the shape rather than pay so much attention to the detail of the eyes I age the subject by a good few years. And most important of all, I had to work hard at giving the skin and shape of the face that soft plump look still so present in a toddler. For this the blending stumps were worth their wait in gold. If you look carefully at the stages you will see how the eyes, and especially the mouth and area around the mouth were softened in the final portrait.

When shown the portrait of herself and asked who this was she looked at it for a moment, then raised both arms and with a little jump pronounced ME!  I know all two year old’s are narcissists, (Siobhon at two proclaimed every photo of a princess or beautifully attired woman in the Hello magazine to be HER), but in this case I like to think of it as genuine recognition rather than narcissistic ownership! 😀 The best compliment ever!