i just had to enlarge this one...i enjoy seeing your new entries immensly...i don't hold much interest in the subject itself but your technique and eye for detail makes even a banal advertisement worth looking at. am i to understand by your comment that this is not finished? i look forward to seeing it done. i like the work you have done from photographs very much, i would be very interested to see some life studies with that excellent skill of yours applied to them, and perhaps some work from your imagination too.

Nah, it's finished. I meant that I need to take a break from drawing in general, not just a break from this specific drawing.

As for life studies, I haven't done much apart from some rough charcoal sketches of my hand (and my mother's foot ) to experiment with some charcoal I bought on a whim. Since I've started looking at the works here on DA, though, I've been more and more inspired to put down the reference pictures and just draw people/things around me.

As for imagination, I don't have much of that. Or, at least, I'm not sure how to express it artistically. Expression, though, has never been the point of drawing for me because I never really felt compelled to put it on paper (with the exception of a lot of pointless ranting in my online journal, but we're talking visual arts). The point of drawing, for me, has been to keep myself occupied, give myself something to concentrate on and accomplish, and to have an excuse for not getting out of the house often ("What? Fresh air? I'm being productive here!").

I love to see expression and originality in other people's work though. It's so much more interesting than drawings from photo references. On some level I would prefer that I were able to create original things, but.. I guess I just need to find a concept that I can translate into something artistic.

There I go rambling on again. Clearly, rambling is more my calling than visual art.

I can't believe your talent. I'm just so amazed by this. I can't see anything wrong with it. It looks like perfection to me. I love the detail on the jewlery and the eyes are breathtaking.

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so much the same...i enjoy your work nonetheless...i can surmise by the choice of some of your subjects that you DO have a good imagination...perhaps sometime in the future you might wish to incorporate more of that into your visual art...in the meantime, these technical excersizes are most pleasing to the eye, a joy to look at!

Excellent work... some of the realism is outstanding and the attention to fine detail is brilliant! Don't know how you managed to get the shading on the face so smooth...

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brilliant job on this.. most of the hand is in perfect detail, except i see what you mean about the rushedness on the middle finger and around her neck. exquisite detail on the jewelry and eyes though..

you did a rush job on the hands? id say their the most real looking part! this is amazing! awesome work on the jewlery too.

Thanks! To get the shading on the face smooth, I used a 6B pencil and rubbed it a little with a piece of fake chamois cloth (I've heard real chamois is great for blending to make soft skin tones, but it's a sort of soft leather, I've heard, and I don't like to buy animal products).

Yes, real chamois is leather... not something I would of thought of but thats certainly an interesting idea. Using the fake chamois certainly did the trick for you, will make a note to look into different cloth materials...

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My Myspace; [link]
Artwork Myspace; [link]

Layne Staley Fund; [link]

This is absolutely and wonderfully amazing... and deserves hundreds more comments! The hands are really well done, they and the jewellary are incredibly realistic and look like they could just be a black n white photo. The lips are also brilliant, I always struggle with lips but those look really life like. Really beautiful work.