I still need to work (a lot) but it was fun to do!

Malo thats great for the first try .. just think after a few tries how far you will come along ....love the cat in the watermelon hat

S Malo,

Great job on your first portrait!!!

Laura

much better then i did

Hey, thanks everybody for your fast replies and your encouragement!

When I draw, the sheet gets all dirty because of the palm of my hand... I need to work on that!

Also, I used only a 6'' X 9'' sheet. I think I should use a 9'' X 12''!

And Kim1963, I love the cat too, I didn't take that picture myself, but it made me laugh a lot when I found it!

I believe that the cat's hat is made from a lime peel. LOL


Anyway, to keep your hand from rubbing the graphite all over your paper do this: Take a sheet of acetate paper or mylar or that plastic stuff that you can put a picture into and insert into a binder. (polypropolene)?

and lay it down under your hand as you draw. It has to be a paper that is slick and will slide otherwise it won't work. A regular piece of paper will work if you tape it down so it doesn't slide around and smudge everything. The shiney stuff keeps it from smudging. It just glides over the paper.

You can also use a photograph that has a shiney surface. You know those pictures that you get back from the developers and they are of the floor or the ceiling? hahahaha they work very well also, shiney side down on your picture.

Hope this helps.

Good job on the drawing SMalo. It takes time and practice to get to where you want to be and you've shown you're heading in the right direction.

Humm! I think I'll go for the acetate paper. What I didn't like in the fact of using a part of a sheet was that it was hiding a part of the drawing! Now, you solve my problem! Great! (***please, fill free to correct that sentence for me... I don't know if I used the correct verb tenses! If you don't tell me when I'm wrong, I won't learn and I'll keep making the same mistake!***)