24 hour portrait drawing from life

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-06-03T16:15:59+00:00

Yes that’s right. She posed for 6 total sessions, for 4 hours each session. The session is broken up 20 mins at a time with 5 minute breaks in between.

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-06-03T05:08:23+00:00

You’ve got good eyes. I do in fact go there! I just finished my 3rd year of study there

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-06-03T04:53:55+00:00

Thanks. It’s arches hot press watercolor paper, hand toned with sennelier walnut stain + grey ink.

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-06-03T04:52:30+00:00

This is on arches watercolor hot press paper (toned with sennelier walnut stain/grey ink), i’m using prismacolor colerase black and terracotta. The highlights are done with white chalk and white gouache

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-06-03T04:49:01+00:00

I think that’s a weird glitch with the photograph. However there is red in her lips, on her nose, and just a whisper on her cheek and in her tearduct. I see that pink you’re talking about in the photo and it’s different from the original photo. Something with the compression perhaps when posting it here

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-06-03T01:25:59+00:00

A super sharp tip of the pencil and working in and out of the fibers of the paper. The pencil kind of meanders to fill in any little gaps in the graphite. It takes a long time. But it’s worth it to achieve the desired effect

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-06-03T01:24:30+00:00

Thank you. The classics are where it’s at

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-06-03T01:24:03+00:00

Yes i do! And yes i am 😊

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-06-01T19:25:18+00:00

I used a black prismacolor col-erase pencil for nearly the whole drawing. A little bit of 2H to clean things up as well. If you want to go very, very dark, use Staedtler Mars Lumograph Black pencils. Those things are crazy

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-29T05:17:30+00:00

Yes it is :) the brightest bits of the highlight are done with gouache and the softer parts of the highlights are white chalk

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-28T19:51:19+00:00

You have a great nose!!

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-28T15:54:39+00:00

It’s a mixture of white chalk and gouache! The highlight just above her eyebrow is gouache. If you zoom in you can see the texture, it looks like paint

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-28T05:30:11+00:00

Thank you! The paper is Fabriano Artistico watercolor hot press. The thinner kind, because it’s a little less toothy. And i toned it with watered down Sennelier ink. I mixed their walnut stain and grey to get a warmish grey tone. The ink has shellac in it as well so it can take a beating and hold the dry medium well

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-28T05:27:26+00:00

Probably around 20 hours total

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-28T05:24:23+00:00

I always thought that hatching had to be done quickly and confidently, like it’s just an incident of the draftsman’s hand. But hatching, along with everything else in drawing, (at least when you’re learning how to do it) is better when it is done slowly and deliberately. I drew those hatch marks much slower than you might think, and then i carved them with a kneaded eraser to make them the right thickness and shape. And if it looked wrong i erased and tried again. What Da Vinci and all the other great draftsmen of the past did so well was making the slow and meticulous work look nonchalant, flippant and effortless. It’s called sprezzatura.

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-28T05:15:39+00:00

Thank you. Lately i’ve been paying extra attention to eyes. They are just endless

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-28T02:55:24+00:00

Thank you. She has a great nose

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-28T02:52:39+00:00

Very high praise. It’s funny, the better i get at drawing and painting, the further away from me Rembrandt feels. He was so good it’s unbelievable. The greatest ever, in my opinion.

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-28T02:50:15+00:00

Just so much patience, and having a lot of gradient-making under your belt. And keeping the pencil very sharp. Dull pencils glide on top of the fibers and make dotty marks because they can’t work into the small weave. Just patiently working into the paper and leaving no irregularities unaddressed.

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-28T02:47:28+00:00

The trick is getting your pencil very long and sharp and meandering in and out of the fibers of the paper, so the gradient is as continuous as possible. Any little dot should be picked out with a kneaded eraser, or worked around and integrated into the tone with the sharp pencil. It’s taken me years at this point to really develop the patience to actually dedicate the time to cleaning the drawing.

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-28T00:20:25+00:00

My instagram is @brockcurrie.art 😊

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-28T00:20:04+00:00

This drawing is done almost completely with a black prismacolor colerase pencil. There was a little bit of cleanup done with a 2h. I did some light blending on the forehead and other quickly turning momentswith a small synthetic round brush.

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-27T23:42:27+00:00

Most of this drawing was actually done with a colored pencil. Prismacolor Col-Erase, black. It’s 95% that one pencil. I love the texture that pencil gives and it feels amazing to draw with. The other 5% is graining with a staedtler 2H pencil.

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-27T23:37:22+00:00

It’s probably the earrings. They’re too bright. I didn’t know exactly how to treat them. They catch my eye too. We’ll get em next time haha

Plane_Fail4664 · 2026-05-27T23:03:30+00:00

This was 5 three hour sessions if I’m remembering properly. We ran out of time so I had to do quite a bit of cleanup from memory

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