I thought I would share this WIP of my Wife's Niece's High School picture.Using HB and 2B mechanical pencils on Bristol Smooth 300 series paper.She has blond hair so I'm going to fill in a background next and work her hair off of that.I have never did anything like that before ; I hope it will look alright,,C&C welcome ,,Ted

[attachmentid=5048]

[attachmentid=5036]

Ted beautiful start ..I can not wait to see it done .. if you would like to post it up top in Portraits 101 that would be a great spot being its pinned and will be easy for memebers to follow your progress

Good job there.

I'm glad you posted the original photo. She does have a sideways grin. Things like that makes it difficult to get the drawing to look right.

Things like that makes it difficult to get the drawing to look right.

Tell me about it!!!! I am very unhappy with it at this point!! I'm going to finish the background and see what ,if anything I can improve upon .

[attachmentid=5067]

Yes, she has a very asymetrical face. But you captured it and I do think you've got a good likeness, except that the shadows aren't nearly deep enough which makes the face look flat (especially around the eyes) and makes the nose look too wide. I hope you'll allow me to offer some suggestions.

I think that if you deepen that dark shadow along the (our) left side of her nose, the node will pop out more and look narrower. And if you deepen the shadows to (our) left side of each upper eyelid (look carefully at the ref photo) the eyeballs will look 3-dimensional. Likewise, if you pull out some lighter areas in the middle of the eyelids and on the bridge and tip of the nose, and the apples of the cheeks.

And lighten the teeth way up -- it will make the tan coloring more apparent!

I hope I got close to what you was taking about Ernest .Anyway,I'm bored with it and calling it quits.It is a freebe ,so I know they will get their money worth.

[attachmentid=5140]

Now she looks Tan like in the picture ....good advice Ernest .