Charcoal portrait of Aftyn as a witch from a few years ago, done in Procreate on the iPad. It’s safe to say I had much bigger plans for a Halloween picture than what I wound up with. There are 3 witches in that video, and I had intended to do a composition with all of them in a cartoon style with a special decorated frame. I started and scrapped it 3 times before settling on another charcoal portrait of the liveliest of the witches.
Those attempts were disasters. It appears that my sketching ability hasn’t progressed to a stage where I can freehand a likeness well enough to be read in a stripped-down cartoon style. The colors weren’t working together cohesively. It wasn’t coming together. I hated it, and coming on the heels of several other subpar efforts lately and a rough work week, I was starting to hate myself.
Then I watched a video from Love Life Drawing on YouTube describing the 5 stages of learning to draw. Symbols – representation – simplification – expression – creation. I recognized myself in stage 2: drawing what you see. I’m not great at simplifying, which is a skill needed for good cartooning. I’ll get there, but I need to work through more of where I am now. It’s good to press the envelope, but the results showed I wasn’t ready to bust out of it just yet.
Despite the setbacks, I love the way this alternate picture turned out. This might be my best color blending yet. The sketch was clean enough that I only needed one pass at it, with just a small amount of later adjustment. Charcoal painting continues to be a lot of fun. Hair still looks somewhat out of focus relative to the rest, so that’s something I’ll need to keep working at.
