Chiaroscuro

Journaling:

Reading the book The Artist's Complete Guide to Drawing the Head by William L. Maughan (The drawing is the front cover of the book.)

CHIAROSCURO

-An Italian term meaning light (chiaro) and dark (oscuro).

-Technique of drawing light and shadow to form the illusion of three dimension.

-"Duplicating the exact shapes of both light and shadow, and paying particular attention to the edges between the two, is fundamental to capturing a likeness."

-Uses Strathmore's charcoal paper "Velvet Gray"; CarbOthello pastel pencils "Caput Mortuum Red" and "Titanium White."

-Paper serves as midtone, Red is shadow, White is highlight.

-Eyes should be the only part of a portrait in sharp focus. All other features should have soft, fuzzy edges.

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The method of drawing shadow shapes seems a much more intuitive way to draw than the egghead with longitude and latitude lines. I never understood how to get from that to a realistic portrait.

I'm only to the middle of Chapter 2 at this point. Scanning forward into Chapter 3 I see he starts showing the step-by-step instructions on how to draw a portrait correctly.

I did this one bass-ackards.

I should have waited.

Sigh.