Matt Smith

This is a portrait of actor Matt Smith, from a moment in Last Night in Soho. I have decided to switch from doing figure studies for a while to doing a series of ink portraits. Some of my previous efforts I think are better than this one, but it gets the likeness pretty well. I think the problem with this one generally is that the values are a bit too dark. If I could bring the line density down about 25% across the board, it would probably be better overall.

There’s some stuff that really works in here, though. There are definite textural differences despite the use of a single color. There’s clear value regions. The collar on the right genuinely feels like it curves around his neck. And I figured out what I was doing wrong with shade at the bottom line of the jaw, not curving those lines back inward. The problem areas are in his hair, the left collar, and some ephemeral thing I can’t pin down that causes it to look bad in a thumbnail (line density too high?).