Here is another Two Young Captains drawing. In this scene, the young captain stands guard as the young pirate is brought aboard the Lauralee.

I am working on my ability to draw full figures. Since I like a good process to help me through something difficult, I started out with blocks in order to work out the proportions:

 

The blocking helped me work out the three dimensions and proportions. 

Once that was worked out, I added clothes and skin to the blocks. This involved a lot of erasing.

It’s worth noting here that I have only recently started to draw consistently with a pencil. I used to be a pen-only kind of guy. In fact, I was a fountain pen-only kind of guy. I still favor a fountain pen if I am going to use a pen, but I now enjoy using a mechanical pencil.

I really like the cleanliness of a pen. There’s commitment and no erasing. You have to work with the lines where they lay. A fountain pen gives you more control on the width of the line and a good ink on good paper is a beautiful thing. That said, pens are very unforgiving. 

Like I said, you can’t erase.

About a month ago (maybe a little more) I found a mechanical pencil languishing in one of my art drawers. I thought I would give it a try. Maybe if I could erase my mistakes I’d be more willing to make some mistakes. 

It was a good move.

The ability to erase and redraw some lines has made it much easier, mentally, to draw. Also, this particular technique of drawing in blocks and then erasing them as I put in the clothes, skin, etc. wouldn’t work for obvious reasons.

I still don’t like the way that pencil marks will smudge. For that reason I only draw on one side of the paper in my sketchbook. But, since it has me drawing more, the trade-off is well worth it.

Here’s an intermediate picture of the drawing. Notice how the blocks have gone away:

 

With the blocks all but gone, I focused on filling in the details. Rather late in the process I noticed that his feet weren’t quite right. His right foot (on the left side of the picture) needed to turn out a little more to give him balance. 

It’s a good thing I could erase!