40 Minutes

I worked on this pair of eyes for 40 minutes. 

These are very much in the style of France Van Stone, a popular artist on Sktchy, since I am slowly working through her class on Sktchy Art School related to eyes. I did choose a different set of eyes to draw versus the ones she demonstrated.

I had a good “aha” moment yesterday both from the class video and and from this drawing, about translating from a 2-d picture to trying to suggest the 3-d-ness of how the eyes nest in the eye socket. It was a little like the nose “aha” moment from last month, although in truth I’ve gone back to struggling with noses again. One thing I keep learning is that this is not a straight path. Those “aha” moments are a big step forward, which are usually followed by several big steps back. Eventually, a bunch of things will coalesce. 

France’s finished portraits all have a high degree of shading and hatching, so eyes don’t like this don’t look so goofy and out of context. Her overall style is not for me, since I don’t have the patience, most of the time, to work at this level of detail. At the rate I work, it would take me days to finish one portrait. 

What is my style? What am I doing? What do I want to accomplish overall? No clue. I should put some more thought into this at some point. For now, it seems more like all learning is good learning. As I look ahead to my April project, it’s going to be a hodge podge, since there are a few loose ends from earlier projects and I also want to do some prep work for my May project. 

As March and my March project nears the end, I also completed the last of five Alun Armstrong portraits.