Monday Night Portrait Sessions

In August 2009, Friday Arts Project (mostly Stephen Crotts and I, and two to four other regulars at other times) began meeting in a dark room with one light shining on a friend or family member or practical stranger to practice drawing the human face. A few months after we started, we had enough work to put together a show, and we called it Countenance One. I have literally dozens of portraits from drawing one almost every week for the past year and a half. Here is the most recent portrait:







I might post others from time to time.
I usually draw with Prismacolor pencils on a medium-value matboard or paper, usually a chromatic gray or something between brown and another color. (Brownish pink, for example) All the drawings were made in 2 hours or a little less.

After doing enough of these drawings I've noticed that I'm about twice as fast as I was when we started practicing. I used to not even get both eyes in, much less something indicating the shoulder, values, much development of the hair. I'd say this has been a pretty valuable weekly exercise for me.