Rendering Part 3
Reference Image
The Hair and Clothes
The chair and clothes will be the same procedure. First, I will lay in the shading, then I will soften with a tortillon. After that, I go back in with a sharp tip and fill in the valleys of paper tooth, using the tortillon again every now and then.
I’m attempting to interpret the hair. I keep the largest shapes of the hair, both its different forms and shapes of light and dark, but I won’t be going for every individual strand of hair. Past a certain level of size of shape, I use my own shapes that suggest the texture of hair. These patterns I use are influenced by other artists I’ve seen and how they draw hair. I try to think about the examples I may have seen the past.
Finishing
Time to bring this one home.
I’m still not drawing every strand of hair, but I am bringing more interest to it, making it look more realistic by adding some more details to it. This is the stage to do that.
In constructing the details of the hair, I’m using my imagination, checking against the reference for suggestion for how I should make my patterns.
I’m using a Factis pen‑style eraser for erasing out the lighter strands of hair.
After that, I may need to add shade back to those light strands with a harder, lighter grade of lead to properly model them out.
Other than that, I search for areas of uneven coverage in graphite, and it’s a matter of continuing what I’ve been doing – evening it out with a sharp pencil time and a kneaded eraser, depending on what I need – until everything looks good to me.