The Sneer

Oh dear.  A portrait of Zinedine Zidane in inktense pencils that went horribly wrong.

The worst thing about it is the mouth.  Oh and the general lack of likeness.  I think this went wrong at the drawing stage, with the lines through the eyes and mouth being at the wrong angle.  They were both too horizontal and should have been more downward sloping, left to right.  In fact, you can probably see where I’ve tried to correct the mouth by adding a bit more red in the top left and bottom right.

Also bad is the intensity of colour.  There’s far too much on the paper.  I must have been a lot more gentle with my self portrait a few weeks ago – I got the values spot in that day.

Because this was going so badly, I experimented a bit by chucking salt onto the wet pencils for the first time.  Something’s definitely happened in the hair but this isn’t something I’ll be making a habit of.

Anyway, this is for the bin.  Not for sale and not being published on Facebook or Instagram.