Portrait of Sukri

When I was living and working in Paris one of my best clients was the Lintas advertising agency. They sent me to Jakarta and Singapore to teach their art staffs how to render ad comps and storyboards. It was an exciting venture as they also sent my wife and I to Bali as a bonus. We spent a week there and it was a great place to visit. I was working on a book for Watson Guptill Publishing titled DRAWING IN PENCIL and did these drawings for examples of colored pencil drawing and charcoal drawing.


I began the study by first doing a line drawing on Strathmore four ply regular surface bristol, using a medium warm gray 962 prismacolor pencil, then I washed Designer's Colors Ivory black over the hair section of the drawing. I added a wash of raw umber over the face.


I then began to draw in the facial details using a black pencil. I added a linear texture to the hair. I added various tones to the face and softened the lines using Bestine and a paper stump.


I kept working on the face, carefully blending the strokes as I drew. I gradually built up the tones until the drawing was finished.


Another drawing of Sukri, she was selling shells on the beach and always had one on her head. The drawing was done on Arches textured paper using a charcoal pencil.