Pencil Drawing of a Woman
First, the artist very lightly laid in the whole shape and the detail of the head using a pencil. Here, the artist plans and figures out everything, the composition, placements, the forms, etc. This stage is important as it forms the basis of where everything else will fall upon. Without a good start, cannot have a good finish.This stage can be thought of as building an armature when preparing for a clasy sculpture. As the sculptor would create an armature for him to start throwing the clay on. It is important to keep this under-structure pencil drawing very light, as it is only a lay-in that you would not want to show up on the final finished pencil drawing. Good tip for drawing lightly is just to use the weight of the pecil as you sketch and hold it very loosely. 
After the lay-in have been accurately established, the artist begins to insert the features onto the right places. Here the artist is inserting the eye into the eye-socket. It is always good to think as if you are sculpting. Imagine that you have established a clay understructure that looks kind of like a skull, then you would proceed to insert the eyes into eye-sockets, etc. Always think three-dimensionally about the forms. Only thinking about the shapes or 2-dimensional aspects can result in a very flat-looking drawing. Artist used the charcoal pencil here, and used the sharp point tip to render the details of the delicate eye, such as the cornea in the pupil ,as well as the subtle folds. It is ok to work on detail once the understructure is completely established. 
Then the artist proceeds to adding more features of the face, the other eye, the nose, mouth, as well as the ourline of the face. All these marks are falling accurately onto the correct spots with ease, since the under-structure was established solidly in advance, enabling the artist to just be free and have fun ,just concentrating on making the piece look good.Also some shadings are being done, as the artist controls the values by pressing and releasing on the pencil to maneuver the lightness and darkness 
Now the artist have went over all the other areas, placing the hair, full features, and also indicated the arms and shoulders for the head to sit on.It is important to always at least indicate the shoulders when doing pencil portraits, because without it the head can seem as if it is floating in the air like a baloon. 
The artist finishes the piece by filling in the shadows. there were also some more detailings and polishing of the face, blending passages, and adding more subtlety, controlling the focus.It is important to always start out carefully with a solid lay-in when staring pencil or charcoal drawings, because the media is hard to fix the mistakes, as too much erasings can do damage to the papar and make loose the freshness of the pencil drawing. You can see more |