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Old 09-24-2002, 03:59 AM   #2
Steven Sweeney Steven Sweeney is offline
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A nice little drawing, Linda. A few suggestions you might mull over:

I wouldn't go to the trouble to try to shade in the background on a pencil drawing like this. Not only does it reduce the contrast between the subject and the background and, so, flatten out the whole piece, but it's extremely difficult and time-consuming to cover such a large area in graphite without getting a muddy or blotchy look.

The dark value of the lips is quite stark, and the edges very sharp. I think you'll see an improvement if you lighten at least the value of the lower lip, and with a kneaded eraser rolled to a point, go in here and there and dab out a softer edge around the outside of the lips.

Even with the baby-like "bulb" nose, we need to see that that feature is connected to the bridge of the nose. Lighten the value of the dark edge on top of the "bulb" so that the light can flow through and on up the bridge.

The side of the face on our right is quite a bit wider than on the left, even though the child's gaze is forward. You might check that out.

Even allowing for the characteristic, proportionally large head of an infant, the hand looks a bit small to me in relation -- but check the face width first, because any changes there may take care of this.

On a baby's face, I would keep all the edges between different value areas extremely soft, so that the transition describes the baby-fat pudginess of the face, rather than sudden changes in the planar surfaces of the face. You can use that kneaded eraser again to just tap-tap in the area of those edges and lift out some of the darker value in a graded transition into the adjoining lighter area.

Hope some of that's useful.

Cheers
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