Pencil Portrait of Parents/Grandparents

I finished the commission for Nancy tonight! Just in time for Christmas! In fact a few days early.  It took me nine working days and about 17 hours to complete (I kept track for the first time).  This is the second piece Nancy has commissioned from me.  Last year for Christmas I drew her daughters.  This year she asked me to draw her parents. She sent me four different pictures in the mail, with requests that her mother's glasses be clear, and perhaps take off a few wrinkles. 

I did my best to compose a good picture from the ones she gave me, doing a little editing on the computer using Gimp. I, however, did not want her mother to be as washed out as she is in the picture I ended up using for the composition.  Flash is such a nasty thing and doesn't make for great portraits - drawn or not!  So, I used the other pictures to help me fill in the blanks some.  I hope her mom looks like her mother.  I think her dad turned out excellent though! 

But, what do you think?  Do you think I did a good job?

Figure Drawing

I really love drawing figures... so here's some highlights from in-class work, and then I'll show you my final project!

And here's what I did Fall Semester for the final, a drawing of Josh and our friend Mark.

And here's my figure drawing final I did last semester, based on pregnancy pictures taken by my friend Lisa Jastal. She did a great job.

First Figure Drawing Class

So, I love drawing, and I really love figure drawing. Last semester I took my first figure drawing class, and loved when we actually drew the figure... Here's some of the work I did in this class over the semester. And look for more to come as I am taking Figure Drawing 322 this semester (as long as BYU will let me add it).

These first ones are loose gestures done with conte. And at BYU, the models are students who have to wear bikinis or speedos.

I enjoyed it when we had guys to draw, well at least when the guys had muscles. Way more fun! Here's just more gestural poses. (like 2-5 minutes)



We worked on correct proportions and used grids to accomplish it.


And here's some extended poses (like 3 hours):



We did some ink washes, so here's a self-portrait and then a figure:
And here's a conte with gesso:

And here's an exercise we did where we had to draw an exact copy of a work made by an artist. Josh and I both really like how it turned out. Too bad it's a replica of someone else's handy work.