Diego Velazquez, Art Lesson

Portrait Drawing after Velazquez

The blending does lighten the tone, and it is sometimes hard to gauge how much lighter it will become. Whilst I do not want to add my darkest darks, I do need something far darker laid down so that I can start gauge my middle tones and form a better relationship and harmony between them. It’s a process that can look quite crude as the drawing all but disappears and we are left with a one eyed wonder.

Now the drawing has almost vanished, there are no real edges to catch the eye, so it’s time to quickly redraw key areas. As the values are more or less in the right place, the refinement of edges is quite straightforward.

Certain edges are further enhanced. With the eye sockets toned the eye can be worked on a little more, although the difficult balancing act is not to overdo it. If too many sharp edges are placed now, the soft transitional effect of using charcoal is lost. If you underdo it, then you get a very weak overall drawing. It is something I struggle with, but a reason why such studies are invaluable. The values are also tweaked. I used a putty eraser to lighten tones, and darken the shadow area of the face that had become too light after the darker tones were added.

I began to add a little shape to the hair, but that came too soon as the background needed darkening, along with all the shadow areas. Before adding these darker tones, I did spray the drawing with fixative. As the paper has no discernable tooth, when you start to add layers it does have a tendency to pull off the previous layer. Fixative helps to some degree, but it is one of the quirks of vine charcoal that you have to live with and adapt to. Another caveat is that vine charcoal will not give you really rich blacks. Compressed charcoal or rich pastels will get you far closer, but not your standard willow. Nitram Fusains (link) is a better alternative, but more costly. Whilst it is a limitation to bear in mind, there is no need to use a full range of values when drawing or painting.

A couple of things that came to my attention a while back, is that my portrait’s chin is giving Jimmy Hill (British sports personality) a run for his money, the back of the neck comes out too wide, and the hair needs to come across the face slightly to make the face appear narrower. Had I spent more time in the first drawing phases, these could have been avoided, but they’re easy things to adapt and change. By swiping a bristle brush across the bottom of chin, it simply blends out into the background, and I can redraw in no time at all. Now the background is coming up in value, I can start to bring out more volume and curves to the hair with broad strokes of the charcoal. The hair is something that really draws itself. There is little variation in the tone and only the odd suggestion of strands of hair that create the illusion of there being more detail. When you first learn to draw, most people have the temptation to draw each of the 150,000 hairs that appear on a human head. Withhold such torturous exercises, and think in masses. Study drawings and paintings, and see how great realism is achieved by grouping masses, whether it be hair or leaves on a tree. Art should be about simplification, details are the enemy.

The neck has been reduced in width, and the hair on our right, brought slightly across the face, although the face is wider on the whole compared to Diego’s. I could continue working and refining here, but as a study I decide to call it a day. I don’t think the paper would hold up to more charcoal, and there’s a danger of sharpening too many features. There’s nothing like doing a master study to make you feel wholly inadequate, but such studies are a great way to learn through experience, even if you venture off into an entirely different style of drawing or painting. Before putting any of these images online, I did try dragging my copy into Google images (with no recognisable filename, or metadata), and was quite surprised that Google’s best guess actually came back with reference to Velazquez’s Portrait of a Man!

Click below to see part one.

CHARCOAL DRAWING LESSONS
FREE ART BOOK Drawing Beginners	CHARCOAL ART Nietzsche	CHARCOAL Landscape
CHARCOAL Female Nude	PENCIL LESSONS Grass	CHARCOAL Plein Aire