I spent a little time working on ears today. Most of them were copied from a book, but a couple were from live models.

I’m getting a better feel for their shape.

I also spent some time today working on my lines. I’ve practiced straight lines and small circles before. This’s time I focused on wavy lines.

I’m striving for clean, one-stroke lines that go where I want them to go. It’s difficult work. I noticed that the mechanics of my hand makes some curves easier to draw than others. Sometimes it helps to turn the paper around so that I can draw the line with the motion that works best mechanically.

This was part of my live practice. I was having a difficult time describing her hair, so I tried it out on a simple sphere (left) and then went after the model again. It helped!

Here’s some more practice with lines. This time I used a smaller pen. It gives me more control, but I feel like the lines are more tenuous.

I’d like to get more confident with my big pen lines. I like it when I can make a bold mark just where it needs to be.

More eye work here. I was inspired by watching the translucent glow of my daughter’s eye and wanted to try and reproduce that on paper. It’s getting there. One of the keys seems to be the placement of the highlights. They need to cross the boundaries of the underlying structures so that you can tell the highlights are relflections and not something else.