Sargent no. 2

Sargent no. 2 is a portrait of  Gordon Greenough, another moustached man with googly eyes. This one was more difficult, partly because of the level of detail, but mostly because of the scale. The actual size of the drawing is 9 x 11, so it is not reproduced much smaller in the book. As we all know, or have been told by our professors, it is much easier to draw large, a fact which always seems counter-intuitive.  Beginning art students are told to draw big, once you can get the proportions correct at a large scale, you can draw anything smaller. I had trouble with the size of the head and the delicacy of the ear and jaw line, and once again, I made the wrong eye higher, which totally upsets the tilt of the head and the placement of all of the other features - that combined with making the left shoulder much too high makes him tilt. I also did not add the white of the inner bottom eyelid as I had already redone the right eye, with the effect of flatting the eye and making him seem to be wearing eyeliner - michael jackson eyes.  In my drawing, the edges are more a line, rather than a value shift, and I was not very careful with the hair. However, compared with Sargent's drawing, you can tell it is a portrait of the same man. I think this piece would also work better if I were using a darker paper, rather than a strathmore drawing pad. Off to the art store! I do need another kneaded eraser, stubs, paper, masking tape, and spray fix. I may sound overly negative in my writing about my piece, however, an artist knows that being able to spot the mistakes is the first step in correcting the drawing. If I were to continue on this piece, (rather than simply making it an exercise), I have already listed several things that I could do to make it better. Photographing and comparing the pieces also makes it much easier to spot the differences, another trick, like looking from a distance or in a mirror. In fact, let's try the mirror trick, only digitally: (much easier than holding it up to a mirror, and much more stable!)


 Ta da! In this image, we can clearly see how the raised shoulder is affecting the whole drawing. There also seems to be something questionable about the placement of the mouth: in fact, it is set straight on the face, rather than tilting to accommodate the tilt of the rest of the features. That might correct the distance between mouth and nose, although I might have to look into the angle and length of the nose as well.