Gray Fingertips

Seeing as I hadn't picked up a pencil to draw in a while... I felt the need to get all smudgy and gray again. :)

For me, drawing is completely different from painting or sketching. It's much more mathematical. I always start with the eyes (I can't help it...) and usually tend to ignore even the outline of the face until much later. I look at the picture like an equation where I'm trying to plug the correct variables into. I put the lines, shadows and highlights exactly where the picture tells me to--regardless of whether I think it's in the proper place or not.

And, slowly, eventually, something comes to life right before me. Grant has always been my favorite thing to draw. I love studying the highlights and shadows in the picture to see exactly how the muscles around his eyes lay or how his nose rounds in that little ball just like mine. You learn a lot about a person that way.

I (finally) "finished" up this picture of Grant today I started back in '09. I used "finish" loosely because you never really feel like it's perfect. It's just when you decide to let it be.

While I do have a handful of charcoal and pencils of different gradients as well as little paper blenders, I  tend to prefer a mechanical pencil and my finger tips--as most of my drawing was done during end-of-the-day high school classes like Econ...

I also took on a different subject today:

The first time I've ever drawn Jameson. It's so hard for me to draw people I see everyday... it's like you super-imposed this pre-concieved ideas about how they should look. Or maybe it's just that you take all their pieces and nuances for granted and overlook them. Anyway, I loved noticing the super thin bridge of his nose and its slope as well as his tiny pursed lips and all his squinty-muscles.

Lol, ok. I can't look at it anymore because it's just cracking me up!..