drawanyway.com

This is not a picture I am pleased with, nor is it a good likeness, but we were travelling back from a weekend away today, and it’s all I got a chance to draw. Moreover, it was drawn with my daughter’s substandard hard pencil crayons - I throw them out when I happen across them, because why should she have to draw with poor materials when better ones are available for the same price? - on her colouring pad and with her head resting on my arm. My right arm. The one I draw with.

Bad workman, tools, etc. yes, yes. All that aside, it did help me think of the topic of today’s post. I only had a blue and a red pencil to work with, but as I observed my sleeping daughter’s face, I got a chance to see the colours it was composed of in great detail.

Now, if you ask her - she’s two and three quarters - what colour she is, she’ll say ‘pink’. And if she wanted to colour in her picture accurately, that’s the colour she’d choose. But she’s not pink. Nobody is. No-one is one, flat colour.

As I looked at her skin, I could see patches of white, maroon, puce, even blue and yellow. Sadly I did not have a full range of colours to hand or I could have represented them.

A very interesting exercise, if you have a computer with Photoshop on it, is to open a photograph - a portrait with plenty of natural light, not one where the face is bleached out. If you select the ‘dropper’ tool and move your mouse over the photograph, you will see a wealth of differing colours from grey to orange to green to red. That will give you some idea of the diversity involved.

A face is made of different planes and textures, each reflecting the light in its own way. If you look carefully, you’ll be able to replicate this for yourself, and take a huge leap forward in realistic representation.