Tattoo Artist Portrait Drawing

I haven't posted on my blog in a while, feels good to share some new work. In my home town of Quebradillas, Puerto Rico there's a tattoo shop. I walked in and asked the tattoo artist if I can do a portrait sketch of them and they were interested. Here are two portraits i really liked, it was fun drawing this person. I like all the detail of the piercings, the glasses, the goatee, and the tattoo gun. it just adds more depth to piece. It also helped that the tattoo artist stood still.

I've been wanting to draw in a tattoo shop, I don't know why i took so long to ask, they are artist and customers come in with an appreciation for tattoo art so i discovered it's a perfect environments for drawing portraits. I've sketched a lot of portraits at this shop of customers. There's a lot of cool interesting characters that visit this tattoo shops. I'll post more soon.

Portait Drawing of 1980's Teenage woman

This is the other model from Saturday morning's portrait drawing session. The portrait session hires two models for 4 weeks and I spent the 1st three drawing portraits of my friend AJ. On this last session I finally sat in front of this model and made several portrait drawings, she was dressed 1980's style. It was fun sketching her, I wish I had done a painting of her because her outfit was very colorful.

I created the full figured portrait on the right side first in about 40 minutes. I really enjoyed drawing that one, I thought the leg warmers were a good touch. The portrait on the left was 25 minutes, and I created it towards the end of class. It was rushed and you can tell, the eyes on this one aren't right and I lost my highlights on the pupils, so they now look dark and hollow. Lessons learned, I need to make sure I leave a little high light on the eyes.

I still had a great portrait drawing session, the crowd was nice, one of the artists brought Monavie juice drinks that were delicious, and the boom box played a James Taylor live concert recording.

Portrait Drawing Young African American Man

This portrait drawing is of my friend AJ. He's modeling at the Saturday portrait drawing session for a couple weeks. Drawing AJ's portrait has been difficult.

These two drawings I'm posting do look good but compared to the model there are subtleties that I missed. Drawing portraits are difficult and it's the main reason I attend these sessions--for the challenge, and for practice.

I have attended many portrait drawing sessions and I believe they have made me a more skilled artist. AJ will be back next Saturday, hopefully I can draw one that captures his true likeness.

Bust Drawing - Guitar Player Man

Here's another drawing I created at The Toledo Portrait Artist Group, Saturday mornings 9am-12pm. They hire two models for 4 weekends giving the artists plenty of time to complete a painting. Next Saturday will be the model's last posing session. I'll miss the guitar player, he plays good James Taylor tunes.

When I attend portrait sessions, I enjoy creating drawings of the models. Some of the members use paint, some use charcoal, but I like using a sharp Ebony pencil and Strathmore drawing paper, I feel these two mediums help me develop better drawing skills quickly. Plus I like pencil and paper because I can set up fast, move around the model easily and I can often finish several pieces in one session.

I've really enjoyed drawing the guitar player. This Saturday I decided to sketch him from straight on and it was more difficult then I thought. It was a challenge to draw the hands, guitar and face proportionally on one page. I finished at the tail end of the session, with not enough time to start a new drawing so I sketched a quick profile of the model on the right side of this drawing.

Portrait Drawing - Male Guitar Player

I attended a portrait drawing session this morning, I had a great time and completed this nice piece. I decided to position my
Strathmore Drawing Paper Pad in portrait position as opposed to landscape because I wanted to draw the head and hands bigger.

I used Ebony graphite pencils. The model sits for 20-minute sessions before breaks.

1. In 1st 20-minutes, I began with quick gesture drawing of head and hands to make sure both elements were going to fit. Then I sketched in head.
   
2. In 2nd 20-minutes, I started sketching the hands.
3. In 3rd and 4th 20-minutes, I worked on detailing both head and hands and building the contrast.

This was the result. I'm happy with it. O ya, I forgot to mention I created this piece while listening to good country music :)