Drawing Sue Ramirez With Faber-Castell Classic Colour Pencil

In Papua New Guinea, an expat may find himself contemplating at some point in time about how his life closely resembles the saga of our solar system wherein the Earth is revolving around our sun in a circumscribed manner in which the strong gravitational pull of the sun keeps the earth from being swept away of its orbit. Let loose a bit and the Earth will find itself taking a path to uncertainty while infinitely sailing through the darkness of the ever expanding universe. Like a planet, depending on how one should put it, the life of an expat might take a spin only within the collective encasement of three familiar entities: the house, the office, and the shops.

Yet I haven’t heard of a planet displaced from its orbital path aside from what NASA has done in the past when they sent out a spacecraft carrying an impactor meant to intercept a moving comet millions of miles away. Instead of subtle rendezvous, they intentionally smashed an impactor on board a rocket into the comet Tempel 1 to eject materials from its surface which could then be analysed later at a considerable distance.

The impact did little to alter the course of the comet. 

But going back to our topic, one can be forgiven for making inaccurate assumptions on what to expect while living in this country. This can be followed by the sweeping realization that there is not much difference from where you’ve come from. The points in which the adjustment period lies within may not be so steep. And so it came to pass that I contentedly celebrated another year of being here, this time by going through the art tools that I have collected for years.

Which is one of the things I came up with to prevent boredom and homesickness.

Phase #1. I'm proud to say that I'm a fan of miss Sue Ramirez. And I've got a little crush on her. In my other post, I wrote a simple review about Faber-Castell Classic Colour pencils to which I highlighted the importance of using it when one has just started with colour pencil. Here's my pencil sketch of Sue using an HB graphite pencil. 

This is my second attempt for drawing a portrait photo. We can see here that I've just begun coloring an eye. This is where I stopped and moved on to do other things.

Phase #2. After four days, I continued with the other eye and the areas around the nose and lips. I'm actually guilty of rushing through this part. I had wished to see myself involving a more relaxed hand in a series of slow moving gestures when working on accentuating facial attributes in the future.

Phase #3. Yet after another four days, I had only managed to work slowly on enhancing facial colors and my eagerness to work on the hair had led me to draw in a hurry. It was not a good thing for the hair. I'll do some necessary correction and see if I can make it more convincing.

Phase #4. Eight days had passed since Phase #3, I sat down by my drawing table and thought it would be nice to work on the hair. Using the selected colors above, I managed to draw her hair much better than the last times I tried. I guess, you'll just get better in time with practice. 

Just give time a time and you'll see the result.

Phase #5. A day after Phase #4, I continued with the rest of the hair. I wasn't able to complete it but I was satisfied with what I'd done so far.

Phase #6. Four days after Phase #5, despite  coming home at around 9:00 in the evening, I found the motivation to finish this portrait. Such inducement is probably coming from my strong desire to test the Faber-Castell Polychromos and set aside the FC Classicfor a while.

Last week, the Faber-Castell Polychromos that I ordered from Ebay through kuya Jun's (my cousin) Paypal account had arrived earlier than the expected time. I haven't tried using it yet up to now but I might give in to the temptation on one of these days.

I've ordered the set of 120 pieces which has a wide range of color values. What I find interesting with this is that those nice people from Faber-Castell has even bothered to give each piece a name apart from the numerical values imprinted next to it.

The big difference between the Classic Colour and Polychromos is that the former is wax based and the latter is oil based. If time permits, I will be writing a review for Polychromos and point out some other differences between the two.