Author: Anika Helmke
Very good, Anika, and well-composed. His drawing has a lighter, softer touch and his edges, even the eyelids, aren’t as hard or defined; a good thing to learn from. It looks like you’ve added lip color-note how his disappear into the surrounding area without such a defining contour
Also, the left side of her face (our left) should be slightly narrower, and the right side (our right) slightly wider.
Nevertheless, good work overall.
Anika Helmke Revised Value Drawings
Very good. The nature of that leaf shape poking in from the bottom edge could be more accurate in terms of its curvature, but values are very good.
It might be a glare in the photo, but the upper quarter is too light in value. If it’s the photo could you shoot it again? Also that slightly lighter area at the left center isn’t nearly that much lighter than its surroundings–it should be an almost imperceptible lightening of that dark value, not a sea change. The texture of this drawing is mottled. It would be better by very subtly filling in the lighter splotches with a super sharp pencil.
Very good. The stripe on the upper right is much darker (not nearly as light as the others), and so is that triangular shape along the bottom edge.
Very good as well, but the lighter values in the stripes aren’t this white. Compare them to the value of the paper; none of them and no part of them is that white.
Given what you wrote, and what I see in the drawing, I suggest a composition more like this (see below). I don’t see anything happening in that top third (or slightly more), so I say lose it. There’s also a conventional wisdom in portraiture to place the eyes in the upper half of the composition–yours are on the 50-yard line, and the composition is teetering top to bottom.
Meanwhile I’ve adjusted the perspective on the mantle to gently direct our attention to your eyes, which are the focal point. I’ve also added a framed picture on the left wall to do the same.
I like the way she’s closed in by the space, and I’ve added the perspective elements to ramp up that feeling of feeling safe and cozy but unable to ignore the larger forces looming around us.
