This is a warm up sketch where I drew some lines on the page and formed faces from them.

Pen, 5x8 in. 1 hr.

So I kind of threw out the idea of trying to memorize the face then draw it, I think what I need to work on is learning the different planes of the face. So I'm going to try drawing a few different versions of the same person on the same piece of paper.

Mechanical pencil, 30-45 mins.

I think I'm going to try a different approach with these. Like instead of just copying the photo I'd like to try and study the photo to get a good image of it in my head then try and recreate it, probably stylized and leaning more towards a caricature to emphasize the unique features of the individual.

-Watercolor and pen, 1.5 hrs

So Im starting an art blog which will basically be an art dump for everything I do. Which means I will be posting finished work, sketches, traditional and digital artwork. One aspect of my work I would like to improve on is figure drawing and faces from my imagination. So a lot of my posts will be from quick 1 to 2 hr sketches using photo reference. I will try to update with one of those daily. I have two books that I will be working from for these sketches and I'm not too thrilled with either lol. I am using the books, "Facial Expressions" by Mark Simon and  "People and Poses" by Buddy Scalera. Both books are pretty campy with the expressions and poses, but they should help with proportion and perspective. The following images were done over the past couple of weeks.

This is a skull from the facial expressions book. I was trying to define the volume of the skull by creating overlapping shapes and lines. I usually  just draw the basic contour lines and shade with some form of cross hatching/blending.  

-Mechanical pencil, 2 hrs.

 -Mechanical pencil, 2-3 hrs

Im not really sure what happened here and I'm a little disturbed by the result lol. I think I was trying to do something similar as with the skull but something went wrong. 

-Mechanical pencil, 2-3 hrs.

Here are three different angles of the same nose. I was thinking that since some of the expressions in the book are poor examples of humans, I might just swap features on people or just focus on one feature on one person from multiple angles. 

-Mechanical pencil, 1 hr.

This is a drawing I made with deviantART muro. Muro is a free, browser based, digital painting program that in my opinion is a lot of fun to use. It has a bunch of custom brushes, some you have to pay for to unlock but I just use the standard set.

-deviantART muro. mouse, 5 hrs.

 Pen, 1.5 hrs.