"Man with white beard" Graphite pencil portrait

Artist

Matthew James Taylor

Medium

H Graphite pencil

Date

1 Mar 2006

Creation time

One hour

Tags

Drawings

Pencil drawings

Portraiture

Tonal rendering

Comments by the artist

This portrait was really hard to draw because the model's large white beard was concealing his jaw line. When you can't see the shape and extent of someone's face then it's hard to map out all the anatomical features accurately.

But I guess its good practice to draw poses like this because it helps you to visualise the important anatomical landmarks underneath hair and clothes. We don't always have the luxury of drawing naked, hairless people!

I drew this picture with a grade H graphite pencil and it was so light on the page that it was very hard to see. After I scanned in the sketch I increased the contrast in Photoshop so you could see more detail in the linework, as a result the tooth on the paper is more apparant too.