Another beautiful, interesting nose to use as sketch reference today:

©2014 Jennifer Georgeadis. 13cm x 15cm, graphite on sketchbook paper

I find drawing noses to be fascinating and always challenging. This is one facial feature that I need tons of practice sketching, so here are a couple of shnozzes from today:

©2014 Jennifer Georgeadis. 17cm x 17cm, graphite on sketchbook paper

After a busy few days of work, home renovation and repairs, I finally got this drawing finished:

©2014 Jennifer Georgeadis. 14cm x 20cm, graphite on sketchbook paper

For a challenge today, I tried a different variation on chiaroscuro, using complementary colours plus black and white to describe these figures:

©2014 Jennifer Georgeadis. 25cm x 17cm, conte, charcoal and gesso on sketchbook paper

I painted another digital portrait today, and recorded a time-lapse video of how I made it!

©2014 Jennifer Georgeadis. 17.5cm x 23.5cm, digital charcoal

I'm back again to traditional media with this sketch. I love the tactile nature of charcoal and gesso in creating these chiaroscuro paintings:

©2014 Jennifer Georgeadis. 16cm x 21cm, charcoal, conte and gesso on sketchbook paper

Another attempt at chiaroscuro, only in a digital format. I like the ease that digital media allows for painting chiaroscuro, but I still prefer the feeling of paint and charcoal on paper for this kind of work.

©2014 Jennifer Georgeadis. 7cm x 9.5cm, digital oil and blenders

The other day I was recalling an art college instructor who taught us how to paint images in chiaroscuro, which is painting using extreme contrasts of dark and light. Our instructor showed examples of figures painted using a scumbling technique, the process of applying consecutive thin layers of paint to a painting, similar to the process of glazing, but with an opaque medium instead of a transparent one. Alberto Giacometti using scumbling in much of his sketched portraiture.
I wanted to try chiaroscuro and scumbling again, and for this portrait, I chose a photograph of 19th-century human rights leader and former slave Frederick Douglass:

©2014 Jennifer Georgeadis. 17.5cm x 23cm, charcoal, conte and gesso on sketchbook paper

It took a while to get the proportions adjusted for this sketch. I spent the good part of one day getting that right, then half of another day working on value. I need to increase my speed, but the time spent was worth it!

©2014 Jennifer Georgeadis. 17cm x 22cm, graphite on sketchbook paper

As I work on practicing drawing and painting faces, I sometimes look back on where I've been, and the successes and failures I've had. This was a drawing from 2010 that turned out pretty well, though it took ages to complete!

©2014 Jennifer Georgeadis. 23cm x 19cm, coloured pencil on black paper