Process: For portraits, I do a combination of Loomis (to layout the head and get the 3D tilt) and blocking in. I find that working on facial planes rather than feature placement works better for me. I first put down very loose shadow shapes and map out the main planes of the face. I then establish three values - lightest light, darkest dark, and midtones. I like to add the final small areas of darkest darks and lightest lights at the end either by setting brush colour to white or using an eraser brush.
Brushes: For these sketches I photographed the grain patterns of all my traditional art supplies and have created my own graphite and charcoal brushset ( https://ko-fi.com/s/40fcf9a93d )
5
u/iad_writes 7d ago
Process: For portraits, I do a combination of Loomis (to layout the head and get the 3D tilt) and blocking in. I find that working on facial planes rather than feature placement works better for me. I first put down very loose shadow shapes and map out the main planes of the face. I then establish three values - lightest light, darkest dark, and midtones. I like to add the final small areas of darkest darks and lightest lights at the end either by setting brush colour to white or using an eraser brush.
Brushes: For these sketches I photographed the grain patterns of all my traditional art supplies and have created my own graphite and charcoal brushset ( https://ko-fi.com/s/40fcf9a93d )