It feels good to sketch and know I still can ... It's been so long since I've drawn a face freehand, and I've missed it dearly. There's something about faces which captivates me ... there are some photos I'll see online, and I just have to draw them. It's inspiring to see photographers capture not only someone's likeness but someone's spirit in a picture, and I've always wanted to mimic that with pencil and paper. I often find myself trying to do the crinkle of someone's eye justice, tracing the curve with my eyes and my pencil, only to erase and try again. Other times, the crooked smile I've drawn doesn't have enough charm, the bottom lip doesn't have enough shine, the hair doesn't look wispy enough.
No matter how much I experiment with other mediums and how much I become enraptured by the colors I can mix with paints, I always come back to my pencils and fall in love all over again. The bare simplicity of grayscale graphite can create such a range of beauty, and there is nothing I love more than working with a single sharpened pencil.
Drawn with HB pencil only. Because less can always be more.
