Words, Art & Science by Anthony Francis
As it says on the tin: it's late and I'm tired, so here's a quick sketch with a big honking Sharpie on 9x12 Strathmore, no roughs whatsoever. Roughs would have helped correct a few errors of outline and proportion - I didn't quite get the roundness of gabby there on the left - but real roughs would have taken longer than 10-15 minutes, and I'd have been up to 3AM again when trying to get to bed early.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Sharpie sketch of the Apostle Paul, interpolated from the earliest descriptions and paintings we have on record: "A man of middling size, and his hair was scanty, and his legs were a little crooked, and his knees were far apart; he had large eyes, and his eyebrows met, and his nose was somewhat long.” The joined eyebrow is from the description, but the pointy beard, sideburns and clothes come from these:
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Suuuuper quick sketch of Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ, done with a big honking Sharpie. My first failed drawing on Strathmore 9x12 served as a basis for a quick resketch on 9x12 tracing paper, again with the Sharpie - it has such a crystallizing effect on your drawing, as those huge darn lines cannot be taken back and you just gotta GO with it. Not altogether bad for 10 minutes, though that darn "head de-tiltification" thing is still working against me:
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Quick sketch of Reginald Fuller, using pencil roughs (started upside down to get the proportions, then rotated back to normal to fix the details, which was harder than expected; the first upside down one turned out to be more useful for me to see the features and relationships, but I only got it right once I put it right side up). Then a quick render with Sakura Pigma and Micron pens and a Sharpie.
Not ... altogether bad, though it could have used another pass.
He, also, looks so happy.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Super quick sketch of Robert Axelrod, done by tracing over my own roughs twice then rendering over that with my standard Sakura Microns. Eyes WAY too big, face too wide, I didn't quite get the head tilt (as usual), and it seems like I cut off part of the top of his head, though I was partially able to fix it.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Suuuper quick sketch of E. T. Jaynes with minimal roughs and one big honking Sharpie, rescued from a bad shading attempt by tracing over my own drawing, and them I'm like, hey, I can leave the tracing paper over the original attempt and that gives me my grey layer. Didn't quite get the head tilt:
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Quick sketch of John Watson. Kind of reminds me of a cross between H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Kent.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
It's late and I'm tired and want to get to bed early, so here's a suuuper quick sketch of Xiao from f@nu fiku hanging out at a bridge of some kind. (She's up in the cables, goofing around over a vast drop, because she is insanely acrobatic and unafraid of heights, living as she does on a lighthouse cantilevered out over a sheer cliff face).
Drawing (well, sketching) every day.
-the Centaur 
What started to a quick sketch ended up with me pulling out all the stops so I didn't have to stay up to 4:30 in the morning. Roughed with a 2B pencil on Strathmore 9x12 Toned Tan, then inked with Sakura Micron pens, with shading and white highlights with Winsor-Newton Hard, Medium and White Charcoal plus a little 2B and final outlining with a Sakura Pigma brush pen. I like doing renderings on toned paper as you can go up to white and down to dark, giving you more ways to push the drawing. The face still is too wide, and is missing something, compared to the source image (credited to Maurizio Codogno):
[caption id="attachment_5096" align="alignnone" width="600"]
Douglas Hofstadter in Bologna, Italy - 06 March 2002[/caption]
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Charles Darwin, roughed on tracing paper, then traced over the roughs, both with a Sakura Micron 1 pen on the theory it's late and I'm tired (and I'm more comfortable sketching with ink than pencil anyway).
The rough enabled me to get the guidelines of the shape in place, letting the drawing focus on the details. Still, I'm exaggerating eyes and especially noses. Sigh. More work to do ...
... drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
King James, a quick sketch roughed out with a 2B pencil and inked straight with a Sakura Micron 1 on the theory it's late and I'm tired. Face came out a little too tall, at least based on comparison with this detail of the original painting by John de Critz:
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Ayn Rand, roughed and inked in my usual fashion on Strathmore 9x12, No.2 pencil, Sakura Pigma and Micron pens, Sharpies for deep blacks. I squeezed the face proportions a bit, trying to get it right, and started dropping a few of my crutches on this (the heavy outlines). Again I did the trick where I turned it upside down to get the landscape right, particularly the triangle of eyes and nose; I even got the eyeline right, but failed to extend that courtesy to the mouth, which is bent a bit to the horizontal.
Nevertheless, I think, it came out pretty well: she looks so happy.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Hannibal Lecter, sketched on Strathmore 9x12 in #2 pencil followed by inking via Sakura Micron and Pigma pens. I think this one turned out pretty well, though the eyes are a tad less symmetrical than Sir Anthony Hopkins, eyebrows too far, and a few subtle details of the collar and mask aren't quite right.
C. S. Lewis, same medium as Lecter. His face came out a bit bloated, I think - probably, I rushed it since it was late. Nevertheless, spinning the picture 180 still helped how it came out quite a bit.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Blaise Pascal, roughed on Strathmore 9x12 with a 2B pencil (upside down to get the shapes right) and inked with Sakura Pigma and Micron pens. Forehead's a little off, slightly too big compared to the drawing; the left eye is not bent downward in the same way; actually, it seems like I squeezed that in a bit as I've been doing on some other drawings. In all fairness to myself, I actually increased the size of his head on purpose, as many older paintings seem to collapse the head a bit, and I didn't bend the left eye down, as I didn't see that distortion in any of the other paintings I could find of Pascal.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Saint Stephen, proto-martyr. The face is a bit weird, but, in fairness, the original's face is a bit weird too. I forgot to do the thing where I rotate the picture 180 to see if the shape is right.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
It's late and I'm tired, so you get a quick sketch of David Wolpert today and a real drawing tomorrow. Inked no-regrets straight on Strathmore 9x12, no roughs whatsoever, using only a Pigma Micron 1 for lines and a honking Sharpie for the black areas. Mostly good, but, comparing with the original photo I used for reference, it looks like I broke his nose:
Still, drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Andrey Markov, roughed with a 2B pencil on Strathmore 9x12. I then rotated the drawing and the reference photo 180 to correct errors, over a couple of quick passes, before inking directly on the paper with Sakura Pigma and Micron pens. Not completely terrible, but I still need to practice drawing eyes.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Einstein on Strathmore 9x12. First roughed with a #2 pencil, again using the trick of rotating it 180 so that I could force myself to see and draw what was there, not a caricature of a face. This came out good enough that I half-erased it, finessed the lines, and half-erased again, tightening up, before inking with Sakura Pigma and Micron pens. As for whether the face looks like a face ...
... I do see things to fix, but I am not so unhappy with this one. I put special focus on the relative position, shape, and direction of the eyes, and cross-correlated with the mustache, hair and ears; a few more tweaks to the eyes, eyebrows and lip direction, plus the eye direction, really brought out the smile.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
A sketch of Josephus the historian on tracing paper using Sakura Pigma and Micron pens. I started sketching with a Winsor-Newton 2B pencil on Strathmore, but the face wasn't coming out quite right. To correct it, I opened Google Meet - yes! - which mirror-reflects the images it presents of yourself (so you see what you normally see in a mirror and aren't weirded out). I already had Josephus's bust up in a Preview window, so I mirror-reflected that horizontally and compared them, trying to make fixes.
Mirror reflecting a drawing helps you see flaws in it, and that helped, but on the fine details of the face, it's really hard for me to draw things like lips and noses as what is there, rather than what my mind caricatures, so I eventually flipped the drawing back to normal and rotated it 180, so I would not see the stereotypes and instead had to focus on the shapes.
And when I was done with all that, I decided that it was still off, and I needed to start over.
Since it's late and I'm tired, I pulled out my tracing paper and attempted to correct the drawing by tracing over my own roughs, below. The advantage of this approach is that I can change anything, or even neglect to trace something which was done correctly on the previous level, so, best of both worlds. I think I did pretty OK, though I had not noticed that I'd exaggerated the vertical height of his nose.
Compared to the original ... well, yeah, Josephus has a heck of a schnoz, but I made it like 10-15 percent too tall, and missed the straight line on the hair on the bottom back of his head.
Otherwise, a ... not completely terrible rendition?
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
It's late, and I'm tired. Here's an alleged sketch of an alleged picture of Thomas Bayes.
Eyes are off (more visible if you mirror flip the sketch). And I still am making heads too fat.
Still, drawing every day.
-the Centaur 