Another sketch, another story.

Portraiture is my favourite drawing genre. I do try to do other things, like nature, or still life, but often get bored halfway through and it's an effort to finish. Even doing portraits, once I get the face in, I get bored and the surrounding parts are often just roughly drawn in.

I love doing faces, even though they are so unforgiving. Just changing the shape of the chin, or the space between the eyes, makes the person look different. I often ask a little kid, "Who's this?" If they respond quickly with the right answer, I'm happy that it's 'good enough'. I have to always remind myself that it's OK for it to not be a perfect likeness (I've always struggled with perfectionism, to the point of paralysis) and just the exercise of putting pencil to paper is valuable in itself.

Here's another one I did a few days ago. I have an ASUS Zenbook laptop and a Lenovo Yogabook, which is a sort of tablet that has a keyboard attached that can be bent up behind so you can hold it like a tab, or use it as a stand. I use both to show photos I can sketch from, wherever I want (or need) to sit. At the drawing desk, in my yard, at the park, and quite often in the car.

With other genres, I might draw from life, but I always do portraits from photos. Plants have no problem sitting still and I'm far too self-conscious to ask someone to sit still for a couple of hours while I pretend to be an artist.

This one was done in the car, while waiting for my daughter at horse-riding. The photo is on the laptop. I start with an outline.

Then come the eyes. Now, she's watching me - but it was time to go home.

The next day, out at another stable, I worked from the Yogabook. You can see one of the tricky things with working outdoors from screen devices is reflections. I have to find a shady spot. More detail and shading going in.

Then, I added some freckles. They were too dark at first, but I lightened them with the putty eraser. I kind of wanted to do more shading, especially around the eyes, but after making her look like she had chicken pox, and then saving it with the eraser, I was scared I'd mess it up and stopped.

The final image. (One side looks lighter than the other, but that's the photo, not the actual drawing.)

You can see that the hair is basically scribbled in. Some artists do beautiful hair, I'm envious when I see highlighted wisps framing the face perfectly. I'm awful at hair (and cloth), at least partly because once the face is done, I just want to get it over with. All the fun (and stress) is in the face.

PS: All photos in this post are my own (both the photos and the photos in the photos!)