Another graphite pencil portrait that I’ve been working on, Audrey and Janeice. I started yesterday with penciling in the facial features and general outline – it’s pretty light but you get the idea of how getting these proportions is crucial as I’m working in the shading.

I started with Audrey, working left to right across the piece. Most of these progress shots are pretty rough, and even now I am still in my contemplating stage with the portrait since I notice things every time I look at it that need just a bit of tweaking.

Just like my previous portrait, I get the details down, shade in a medium value, and then return to blend, darken, and lighten or lift the pencil.

Audrey is all sketched in, now I’ll bring in the blender (a tortillion) and lighten with either a kneaded eraser or for this portrait, I’ve used a pink pencil-top eraser as the areas are much smaller and require a fine edge eraser.

Audrey’s portrait is blended now, though I’ll keep returning to it to make minor changes.

Moving on, I’ve begun Janeice’s portion of the portrait, roughing in those medium values.

Darkening in the hair, skin tones – her skin tone is really dark at this point so I lift a lot of that shading off with the kneaded eraser blend, and lift more.

This is the latest photo, and at this point I’ve gone ahead and signed the portrait and I’m calling it complete, however I am still going back every half hour or so and re-evaluating, making more tweaks as needed. I’ll post the final scan in my portfolio.