Hey there everyone! I've got some new stuff to share with you so let's get right to it! Here are a couple of sketches I did on my iPad this week.

These came about while I was sitting in a waiting room when I noticed an older gentleman in front of me. I started looking at the creases on his face and the texture of his skin and thought it'd be neat to do a portrait of a man around his age. With a great reference to work from (discretely) I went for it.

The whole process was really fun. I started painting in the shadows first, the dark hollows of the eye sockets, the contours of the cheeks, the shadow under the neck. Then came a whole bunch of layers of lighter grey to give the face depth, finally the face was topped off with some highlights and this is what the (mostly) finished product came to look like.

I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. All of the wrinkles and spots on the skin look really lifelike, I also like the way his expression turned out.

The task of painting the second portrait, which is of a young woman, was a whole lot more and yet a little more complicated. Because the texture of her skin was to be smooth and blemish-free there was a whole lot of blending to do. I didn't have to worry about that too much with the male portrait as the quick transition from light to dark and patchy to even skin helped to show his age. This would not have worked for a young lady though so everything had to be smoothed thoroughly from one shade to the next. After all of that was done this was what I ended up with.

I think she turned out rather pretty, her nose and lips were the most difficult parts to get right, but I'm really happy with the finished result. She's a little less realistic than the gentleman above, but I wasn't really shooting for any particularly photo-realistic look. I was just trying to push myself out of my comfort zone and do something I never do which is draw the human face. It's kind of an important skill for an artist, so I figured practicing might be a good idea.

Thanks a lot for reading! I hope you guys enjoyed this post. I've got a whole bunch of quick sketches I want to upload soon, and a friend suggested I post some of my older art from a few years back, so I might be doing that too. See you next update!