Thursday, July 5, 2012

The Great Facebook Photo Challenge 3: Hard Mode

Introduction:

This past Tuesday, out of boredom, I developed the Great Facebook Photo Challenge. The rules are simple: I take one of my friend's facebook photos and attempt to sketch it. Upon completing said sketch, I upload the sketch to facebook. In the comments section, my friends then guess which friend or friends I sketched and what photo I based my sketch off of. Whoever "wins" this guessing war gets the honor of picking which photo I attempt to sketch next (has to be a mutual friend and it cannot be a photo that I've sketched before).

My friend Nipuna won round 2 of the contest, and so he got to pick the next picture that I would sketch. When trying anything new, it's only a matter of time before somebody suggests you try something far and away from your current level of ability. It's only so long when you first start dancing before somebody casually suggests you do 300bpm Charleston, and only so long after you start learning to play piano that somebody insists that you play "Fright of the Bumble Bee" (at double speed). With that in mind, Nipuna suggested that I sketch my friends Allyson and Dan:
Oh boy...

Sketch Attempt:

Below is a side-by-side comparison of the original photo and my attempted sketch:

Notes and Experiences:

I'd like to start off by saying that, compared to what I've sketched and been asked to sketch previously, this photo was HARD. The bouquet, the plaid pattern on Dan's shirt, and the floral pattern on Allyson's dress all feature a very dense amount of detail (as you can see, I skipped the plaid and floral patterns altogether, for purposes of time and to focus on other aspects of the drawing). Allyson's hair, while curly and complex, was probably the saving grace of this photo, as it's very distinct and made it easier to identify the subjects of the sketch.

This sketch was the first sketch that demanded I pay closer attention to facial features, and difficult to sketch they were. Eyes, teeth, dimples, this sketch really upped the ante from previous sketches. An important thing I learned when drawing teeth was to make the lines for the teeth extremely light; the lighter the better. I'm still not all that happy with how the eyes turned out, but I'm sure I will have plenty of attempts to practice. Also, this photo was the first photo in which I attempted smudge shading, to get better gradients than pencil and eraser could do by themselves.

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