Hello, its hard to believe, but I am starting the fourth week working on the pencil portrait of my Grandma and Grandpa Dillard. I am now entering the finishing stages of the drawings. My objective moving forward will be to continue adjusting value of the lights and dark areas of the drawing to add a better sense of depth. Also, I want to ensure everything is even and does not look muddy. What I mean, is if an area that should be all one value and it actually is a mix of some lighter and darker values, it will look muddy. This can really be noticeable in the lighter areas of the portrait like the forehead, cheeks, and chin. One more thing that I want to work on is the gradients that go from dark to light to ensure I smooth transitions where I need them. Basically, I am looking at getting the details correct. This is a slow process, but I find it to be very relaxing. I want to give you a heads up that next week, I will be shifting gears a little. Tina and I are going to be taking...

Hello, it is hard to believe another week has gone by and we are almost halfway through September already. Fall is fast approaching, and I can’t wait for the cooler temperatures to come. With the change of seasons, I hope to have less lawn work to do and a little more time for drawing. Speaking of drawing, I am continuing the portrait of my Grandma and Grandpa Dillard. This week my focus has been on my Grandpa and getting the values established and correcting some areas that were off with my original outline. For my Grandpa, I started with an H Pencil and working from the top left began to build up the layers to get the skin tone. For the skin, I used mainly pencil, instead of relying on the blending stumps and makeup sponges to start. Then gently went back over the areas just to soften and blend the edges. When I did the skin for my Grandma, I think I relied too much on the blending stumps and sponges which almost makes it look blurry. I do not believe this will be a problem, becaus...

Hello and welcome to the start of the second week of my blog post series on drawing my Grandma and Grandpa Dillard. Last week I left off with the outline of the drawing being completed. This this week I have been concentrating on my Grandma. My first objective was to set the rang of values that I will be using and then build from there. This is a tip I have received watching several videos on drawings done by JB Hillberry. Anyway, for my Grandma, the darkest areas are the inside of her ear and the shadows from her glasses. The lightest areas are the highlights on her nose. At this time, I will be using a 6B pencil for the darkest values and the white of the paper for the lightest value. I began with a B pencil laying in the dark areas very softly. Then I transitioned to a 3B pencil, followed by a 6B pencil. In building the layers this way using light pressure, I can avoid some of the shine that is created when using graphite as a drawing media. The harder pencil leads, especially when ...

  Hello, last week I talked about accuracy in drawing and how I wanted to improve on that. To work on my accuracy, I am starting a portrait of my grandparents.  As I stated last week, I have always wanted to be able to draw portraits well and I will be devoting time to working on them. Because practice is the best way at improving on any task. Anyway, for the next several weeks I will be posting my progress on this portrait and the steps that I am taking to bring it to life. This portrait really started with a decision to do a drawing where I focus on every part of it from beginning to end. To be honest, many of my landscapes are only roughly planned and I will have only a general idea of the direction I want to go. Then there are normally several side routes I take along the way and I end up experimenting. For this drawing, I want to take what I have learned in the past and use that without experimenting too much. Sadly, my grandparents passed away many years ago so all I...

  Hello, over the last couple of months I have been blogging about several landscape pencil drawings I have finished and a high-level overview of how I completed them. I do a lot of landscape because I just love to draw them. Another reason that I like to draw landscapes is that they are actually very easy to do and make a great starting point for practicing and gaining confidence. This week I want to go a little different direction with my blog and talk about accuracy in drawing. I bring this up because there is another area of drawing that I would love to be able to do well and that is portrait drawing. However, to be good at portraits you must be able to draw accurately. Actually, it is more than that, you have to be able to accurately see, interpret what you see, and then correctly render that on paper. I have heard many artists say that portrait drawing is the hardest subject to master, and I would have to agree with them. Nevertheless, I also believe it to be one of the mos...

  Hello, for this week’s blog post, I decided to do a quick mountain scene with a waterfall to better demonstrate the technique that I have been using with the erasers. From start to finish the drawing only took a little over two hours. Which for me is very quick because many of the drawings I do will take me ten or more hours depending on the level detail. Anyway, I also filmed the drawing as it was progressing, and the video is attached to show exactly what I am doing. Sadly, I had an issue with my camera while I was filming the foreground rocks and water fall and I did not get that segment filmed. However, the technique I used was essentially the same as the background mountains. Because I wanted to do a quick drawing to film, I decided to do a vignette. A vignette is a type of drawing that fades out on one, two, three or all four corners of the paper. Meaning that the drawing does not cover the entire paper. This is often used to draw the view’s attention to the main focus of...

Hello, another week has gone by, and I wonder where the time has gone. This last week, my son Colton was home on leave from the Air Force. It was great to see him because with COVID-19 it has been around 20 months since the last time we were together. Anyway, while he was home, we were able to attend the replay of a wedding of a close family friend and get a camping trip in that included a visit to Gettysburg Pennsylvania. With all of that and returning to work on Thursday and Friday, I was surprised that I got this week’s drawing finished in time to get a blog post written. This week’s drawing is one I have planning for a little while. I love the ocean and the sounds of the waves crashing into the shore. There is raw power in the ocean that nothing on earth can match or stop. Then add a light house, which represents a beacon of hope and safety, and you get a balance between extremes. For this week’s drawing I wanted to show powerful waves crashing into the shore with a lighthouse ab...