I was looking forward to this exercise. When I read the brief it seemed like a really good way for me to let go of some of my perfectionism when drawing. I started by going through my photos to see if there was one that fit the brief of having a figure with some other details. I created a shortlist and then finally settled on this fun photograph of my son:
Keeping the photo in front of me using a monitor, I drew in my sketchbook using a graphite pencil. I first drew a box in the rough proportions of the photo to give me boundaries to use, and then set about taking my time to draw the image. The sketch was approximately A5 in size, so I didn't have space to go extremely detailed. I think this was useful to start thinking about how I chose the essential features.
It's been a while since I sketched with a pencil this way, and I am pretty happy with the result. Some of the composition is a little off, but generally I think it's a successful little sketch. More importantly, I felt like I was having fun drawing again. Next, I needed to draw from the photo reference again, but this time constraining myself to do it quicker, and only pick out essential elements.
Looking at the second image, I notice that I sent a lot less time worrying about the values of the background, and my shading was a lot more limited on my son, letting the darker value of the gorilla facilitate the contrast. My son's face is a bit of a shocker - I think I had the book or my head at a weird angle, as the eyes are all over the place! However the arms and clothing folds seem to work well even with reduced detail. the third re-draw used only this second drawing as reference, the photo now being hidden away.
Weirdly, this ended up seemingly having more detail than the second sketch! I think I subconsciously noticed the lack of detail and made a choice to add that detail back in.
Again, the eyes on my son's face are all over the place. Overall some of the lines are starting to shift in the composition, or distort slightly. However, it still has a decent amount of information and feels like it still has energy. The final drawing was to remove all reference completely, and do the drawing from memory! Luckily I managed to do this last sketch on a new page of the sketchbook, so all the previous work was hidden away and could not influence my choices from my peripheral vision.
I actually think that my son is probably the most successful in this image. The likeness is not 100% spot on, but I think it captures his spirit more than the previous two sketches. The gorilla's head looks a bit distorted. The fence is more conceptually rendered as wood than trying to be an accurate representation. I am also pleased with my choice for the gravel - combining an overall texture through marks combined with the stronger individual marks communicates a lot without over-rendering the stones.
The main thing I took away from the final sketch was that I was still trying to create an accurate representation of the photo from memory, rather than interpreting the information and drawing in my own way. So I thought it might be a useful additional exercise to do that. In traditional comic process the pencils and inking layers and can often be completed by two different people. The inker has to interpret the pencils, and make their own choices for the final ink render. Given this comparison, I decided to ink the final sketch, and experiment with different interpretations of the sketch with my approach.
For the first attempt I tried to ink it as I saw it, to copy the detail that I could see.
I think this meant that I focused even more on essential aspects, but the overall effect feels a bit wooden. So I decided to have another go, and play around with taking more liberties with the render.
This is more loose with the reality and with the rendering. It feels like it's got more humour in it too, which I like. I still don't think I have worked out how to do a more cartoony style that distorts reality even more. I would like to work on this so that I can do both observational and imaginative drawing in a more joyful, expressive way.
I've really enjoyed this exercise. While I will always need to keep my drawing skills sharp, I am starting to realise that these fundamentals are even more important if I want to stop trying to be realistic. Only once I know how something should look will I work out ways to break the rules!
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