Next to the wall of portraits at the art store there is a wall of miscellaneous art that most likely comes from the different companies that sell to us. One of these pieces of art has fascinated me since my first day working there. It's a simple sketch of Elvis Presley but the weird thing is that he kind of looks like Mr. Darcy of Jane Austen fame.
The day I worked on it was really sunny so it was the perfect opportunity to use my window as a giant tracing surface. After taping the image up on my sliding doors I went about taking pictures of myself to use for my self portrait. This was the only part of the process that i didn't enjoy. Eventually though i weeded something decent out of the group of shots and proceeded to trace the main part of the face and hair on a new layer in photoshop.
I also rotated the original image so that it would line up with the original elvis portrait. I was originally going to try to do this without tracing (because I kind of have the looming feeling that I cheated) but I really wanted to get all of the proportions right. And in the end I feel like it turned out really nicely this way. Anywho, the magical thing about drawing your own portrait is that things like double chins and blemishes can just magically disappear whenever you want them to! If only you could do this in real life.
Next few photos are just to give you an idea of how easy this project was.
I did this portrait on stonehenge warm white. It's a great paper for sketching on. It's a bit hard to go back to anything else really. It even takes wet effects quite well too. For this portrait my original plan was to try to replicate the sketchy rough style of the original but that quickly turned to bunk because i like smooth lines so much and the sketch just didn't look quite right. I kept a reference of both faces for shading and things like that. In the left hand picture you can kind of see that i have placed the outline of my face on top of the photocopy of the suit and tie and am tracing over that to bring the two together. I should also add that the majority of this was drawn in a pencil that I had never used before but that i am now in love with. It's the Generals Sketch and Wash pencil which is as I'm sure you can imagine water soluble and awesome :D It made the shading quite painless. For elvis's suit i used a large water soluble graphite crayon that I can't remember the name of -_- Anyways all in all a good experience and I am really happy with how it all turned out in the end.
Now I'm off to see if the mats and frame for it are in! Hopefully so :) I will post a photo of the complete package when it is all put together.
