On the 23rd, I decided to get back to portraits. And in Flickr explore, this portrait was especially captivating:
This is what I made of it:
I think I got the shape and proprtions of the head right, and I enjoyed shading the denim jacket – but that’s possibly the best thing I can say about it. Just a week of practicing less than earlier has pushed my skills back to the poor level they were at the beginning of July. I’ve ended up changing the model’s smile, which looks so heartfelt and happy in the original photo, to a suspicious side glance.
Trying to make sense of what I did wrong, I think I’ve got the eyes in a straight line, which I used to struggle with earlier. I tried really hard to get the depth across with shading. So the main problem is with the smile and my shaping and proportions in the lower half of the face; or, possibly, there are very tiny details in the eyes that have to be done right before the drawing looks realistic.
It also feels worse to draw a person wrong than a building wrong or an animal wrong; because bad skills can so easily be taken for a deliberate caricature or insult.