Some things you need to hear or discover for yourself a thousand times before it finally sinks in. These are some portraits I did on toned paper that brought some old lessons to the surface and made it painfully clear that I still have so much to learn!
1) For the love of God get the drawing right before you start rendering! It is difficult to impossible to fix the drawing after rendering.
2) Get the gesture right...the slightest angle of an eyelid or tilt of the head speaks a million words.
3) Establish clear boundaries between light and dark early on. Nothing in the dark should be as light as your lights, and nothing in the light should be as dark as your darks. Seems like common sense but it's harder than you think!
