Drawing people...can be tricky

So for my art final I decided to challenge myself and do a portrait. We had not done many portraits (actually we only did one) and so it was an area I wanted to explore more.

Let me just tell you...
Drawing people is hard. I mean not only to have them sitting there staring at you or an object, but capturing the subtle things that make us all individual.

I digress, before portraits we got our entire art folder back to reflect on anything we wanted to do better. Here are a few I can't remember if I posted. This was my cup.
My attempt at cubism.

I also did my pizza cutter cubist style, then had to add some color.

Mono~variations of one color

what it actually looked like

Supposed to be analogous, but the red was way too bright...

Complimentary colors...

Another one of the monochromatic

Then we had to draw a classmate and have that classmate draw us! This was nerve wrecking, but fun...I drew my classmate Jonathan 

A lot better than my blind contour drawing of him...

Anyways I decided I wanted to do a portrait of my mom. Not only is her birthday coming up, she has a hard time seeing how beautiful she is. I thought if I could show her that would be a nice present and I could have the portrait framed...

Boy was I wrong!

I started by just sketching out her face from a series of photos I took...

This was frustrating me so I decided I would just do it in person. Sitting right there in front of her and drawing her...like at a carnival. That was much better

When I took these to class my professor suggested taking photos of myself/classmates with the face at an angle to practice proportions to get a more interesting pose from my mom.

So I got on my phone took some photos and used some photos I had to practice drawing different faces...

I got bored with that and decided to draw some other people young and old to get the different aspects of wrinkles and small features...so with phone in hand I tried to draw these images on a much grander scale.

I felt confident I could do my mom some justice in drawing her. So the next morning I went in feeling pretty good. However, my first attempt was a flop.

I think I insulted her more than anything. She was a good sport.

She said I made her look like an "OLD BAG" and was mortified at the portrait.

I was shocked too. I mean I was following all my little indicators and value tricks.

So we shook that off and tried again. This time she asked me to leave out her sagging chin, any wrinkles, and to make her hair more wavy than curly...Oh and she wanted to smile.

Do you see where this can be a problem for an artist?!

So here is what we ended up with for the second "final" attempt...

Not too bad, except it looks like my mom 20 years ago!

I asked her to let me try one more time with her eyes closed...

She obliged and I think it turned out the best in terms of actually looking like her. 

She was again, not too happy.

I believe her comment was, "yup there I am with my gobble chin and everything"...

I think she's beautiful! 

And it was a lot of fun bonding with her while I drew.

I was not satisfied with any of those for my final so I decided to try another picture to portrait drawing. I was looking for a dramatic photo...

I found one of Carleen that I really liked.

Again, it was harder than I thought and I ultimately did not like the end result.

I was going to settle on just turning in the closed eyed version of my mom, when Brayden came up and asked me if I could draw him.

I said of course, but I would need to take some pictures. Then he could choose which picture he liked and I would draw that. I took several here are a couple...

 I played with the contrast and highlights, so it would be easier to draw..

Below is the one he picked...

and this is what I used for my final...

Ultimately there are still tons of flaws and I could have spent days on this, but technically I was only supposed to work on one subject for days...

Not several subjects a day!

Oh well, the teacher loved all of them.

I think I'm going to have to draw my other two boys and frame those things!