Another creation of mine

2 weeks ago I finished a piece of art that was commissioned by someone who saw my online art gallery and sent me a message to draw him.
My art is usually consists of drawing the beautiful female figure and less of the male figure, just because I love the softness of curves and slick lines. Overall I love women :) that sums it up pretty much!

So I gave the commission a little of though, but I decided to do it anyway, just for the experience and having at least one male art to begin with.

The actual process took sometime, since, from the beginning to the end of the draw, I've been busy with life, work..etc or just had down times and no mood to draw at all. It happens to everyone, and it's hard to stay focus and motivated all the time, when the project that you work on is sometime insignificance at some points. So, every now and than I used to find my self draw, and hour, two and sometimes half an hour.

So, it has been around 2-3 months since I started the project, until one day I decided to finish the this draw once and for all! I sharpened my pencil, and hit the paper.

for those who want to know how I draw and what is the process/tools that I'm using, so here it is:

Tools:
- Convert/Print the colored image in gray-scale version (it's easier to me since I'm colored bind to see how the shading is done when it's like that)
- regular A4 paper
- regular B2 pencil
- regular eraser (Though I also posses those sticky erasers that looks like gum)

Process:
now having my gray-scale version of the image that I wish to draw/mimic/copy, I always begin with the tip of nose. Now, usually artists measure and plan their art on the paper that they draw on, I usually don't, not that I think I got confidence at the way I draw, it just that I love to draw as it is, without knowing what will come up in the end, I don't like it always to be 100% the same, on the same method, I could just "print" the image and trace it.
from the nose, I build the nostrils and create the shadows around it, than the nose it self, eyes, eye-brows, lips, cheeks, ears, hair, face, body.

The shadowing process is the most time consuming on my part, shadow/light pass consists of and endless net strokes. vertical, horizontal and diagonal strokes with different weights.

The hardest part of a drawing, is drawing it correctly with proportions, correct element positions, the right pose, shading and than details.

In this art, I had few problems when I finished it (I saw them in the middle of the draw, but continued with it anyway), and my problems were: position and details.
I had a trick up my sleeve though! When finished my art, I photographed it (since I don't own a scanner) and fixed the light/contrast in Photoshop.
My trick, was using a Photoshop tools called: "Cloning" tool, the "Move" tool and the "Scale" tool.

basically I put the original image in a layer, and my "imperfect" image over it with a 40%-60% (changeable) opacity and than started to move/clone and scale parts of my art to match the right positions of the original image. Note that I also fixed digitally some details as well.

I didn't made it perfect, as still its my art, together I blended it to make a real cool 90% art 10% digital fix, that you can see below:



I hope you like it, it was a fun project to do, as you can see from the image, my art is on top of the real image, together it creates a unique image.

- Shany.