Rendering Part 2
Photo Reference
Where We Left Off
Last time, I shaded the left side of the face, modeled it, and I laid some crosshatching in the forehead.
Covering the Face
I move into the lighted side of the face. I shade the halftones.
Halftones are important to make lighted areas look like they have volume, make them look three dimensional. Halftones have to be light. They cannot look as dark as any shading in the shadow.
To accomplish this, I do not use hatching that’s as tightly spaced or as dark as the hatching of the shadows to render areas in the light.
Aside from completing coverage of the face with shading, I do a little modeling, meaning I add some shading here and there to make some areas of blending look smoother.
Darkening the Eye and Shadow of the Nose
The corner of the right eye is in deep shadow. I shade it darkly to reflect that.
The nose casts a shadow which is darker than even the rest of the shadowed side of the face, and I need to darken it to show that in the drawing.
The Beard
Now, it’s time to put in the beard. I’m not going to draw every single little hair of the beard. What I do is create a pattern that suggests hundreds of hairs. A pattern of light and dark that represents the salt-and-pepper coloring of the model’s beard.
Hair
Before I get to the hair, I very quickly put the ears in.
I lay the hair in with an HB lead using a continuous stroke. I don’t hatch for this stage. I very carefully go around the highlights I’ve drawn out, make sure I don’t accidentally cover them.
Now I need to shade in the highlights. They’re not pure white – they need to be darkened a value or two.
Neck
I lay in the neck with a flat shade.
I model things out. I lift shades with a kneaded eraser and redarken as needed. Last thing I want to do today is darken the occlusion between the neck and the collar
And I think that will be it for this session.