more development for smoke

because my previous efforts to produce a successful image had failed i decided to go back to my original sketch of Jolyon, of all the images i had produced it was closest to what i had hoped to achieve. however the face did seem quite inaccurate, unfortunately for me jolyon is something of a master at portraiture keen not to offend him or show myself up i spent ages trying to get an accurate likeness.

my first sketches (top left) were quite alike to my original rough drawing, although it sort of looked like him the image was far from accurate, there was something which i just couldn't get right. because of this i thought of a bit of advice from the master of portraits David Downton, that is to just draw the face a lot. there are things you will notice after repeated drawing of the same face, be it proportions, characteristics, tonal patterns, the more you paint it the easier it is. the images on the right is an example of that theory put into practice, they were all done freehand on rice paper with a big brush very quickly, soon enough there were certain consistencies that appeared.

from that big page of drawing i set about creating some more refined images, freehand again except this time i really considered every mark in a hope i could nail that elusive likeness.  

this final page was me pretty much giving up on hoping to get the likeness with spontaneity and good intentions, this time i used a grid method, made famous by chuck close this is a process i use very rarely. that said it is incredibly useful for pinning down those features of the face that make the likeness, it gives a really accurate and in perspective end result, which with a little refinement can result in a face that looks like the model, at long last.