This being the first time I drew a portrait looking at an actual real life person in a long time, it is safe to say I was really nervous. I was mostly panicking about not being able to get all the features right on the page before class ended, so I forgot to take photos of the process, which I apologise for.
That being said, I started by quickly sketching a thumbnail to figure out the format and the placement of the face and features on the page. It wasn't anything too complicated since I was viewing the model almost directly from the front, so I drew the portrait in the middle of the page, just slightly to the right since she was a bit turned to the left.
When it comes to figuring out the placement of the features and constructing the face I encountered the same problem as always: the distance between the eyes was too big. Still, I figured out what I was doing wrong. I realised that instead of measuring from the inner corners of the eye, I was measuring from the outside, which of course made the distance too big. I also initially made the eyes a bit too generic, not quite resembling the model's, so I spent a bit of time fixing that by carefully observing their shape, the way the upper lid folded over the eye. I also mistakenly placed the eye highlight wrong, as I was seeing it in real life, which made the eyes seem weird and lifeless. I was then explained how drawing the eyes properly goes:
Since the light source comes from the top right, the shadow of the eyelid will fall on the white of the eye. The darkest part of the eye is the pupil. Next is the iris, which is darker at the top and around the highlight. The bottom part of the iris is lighter. After I fixed that, the portrait looked more lively, more human and had more personality.
This is the final outcome:
Looking at it in another light now, I feel like it could use some more contrast, especially darken the areas under the nose and eyes and also the chin. I will fix that and update this post.
Drawing from nature after such a long time was definitely a challenge, but it helped me improve my ability and understanding of how to convey depth in a drawing: when I couldn't exactly understand how different features deform due to perspective, I could move a bit and see them as a whole, understand their structure and how it's distorted in space. Also, since the model isn't just a photo, but a living person, you can't just capture a single moment and freeze it on the page. You have to capture their personality that you observe during the time you draw them. Not to mention, the time limit pushed me to draw as best as I could in a shorter time, be more organised in my workflow so I could get the main features down on paper as fast as possible.
After getting feedback, I darkened the eyes and defined the nose more, as well as added shadow on the chin and jaw and got rid of the harsh line between the chin and the jaw. I also darkened the left side of the background and ,lightened the hair to make it stand out. I added some details for the neck and darkened the white on the left corner of the mouth as it was too strong.
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