Belle Femme du Village

In this step, I’m focusing on the larger forms and shapes, trying to capture the general pose and thinking about how the major shapes form the composition as a whole. It’s pretty loose at this phase, but it’s really the most important part: if you don’t get it right here, little problems can plague you the rest of the drawing!

Now that I have the pose and major shapes blocked out and am happy with how it all sits on the paper, I start blocking out the edges between light and dark. It’s not so much about features or shading yet, but determining the main boundaries between light and dark. I’m refining some of the edges here too and making sure I have the “attitude” and expression right.

At this point, I’ve already mapped out the shapes of the main areas of light and dark, so it’s time to start getting a feel for the value ranges. Also, at this step, I’ve really got to start thinking about the composition, and where the focal point of the drawing will be. There’s a lot of details in this drawing (the hands and bell etc), but I need to make sure that all these little details don’t detract from the focal point. It’s kinda like determining who the main characters in the story will be, and making sure that the minor characters don’t try to steal the show!

In this step, I’ve really started to push the value ranges to their darkest, and working on rendering some of the finer details. Even though its tempting to just get hyper-focused and draw fingers and eyes and all those fun details, I’ve got to stay disciplined and keep working the drawing as a whole so those details don’t feel like disconnected little drawings. So, I’m always jumping around the drawing and making sure the whole drawing works together. At this point, I’m a little nervous about the background and how I can use it to create a focal point in the drawing…