9.12.2013

Self-Portrait: One Thing Leads to Another

by Lisa Larrabee


Have you ever noticed that the closer you get to something the more there is to do? When I start to get some areas more accurate, other inaccuracies present themselves.  Tonight, I worked to get the pieces (drawing/proportion, values, color temperatures) into better relationships. Correcting some relationships made the incorrect relationships become more apparent.  For example, it bothered me that the eye on the left had looked dull.  It looked dull because the values were too close to the eye on the right that was in direct light with a highlight (but the left received no highlight).  To make the left eye feel more in shadow, I needed to make it darker.  With that realization, I noticed that all of my shadows were too light in value.  I also discovered some issues with the eye shape and the relationship of the left eye to the nose.  Changing the nose affected the mouth, etc.  The good news is that it keeps moving in the right direction.