Here is what happened when I Tried Tried Again.
Still too harsh, and Kelly’s eyes have a dreamy quality that I have not gotten right yet. There will be two more tries up the road a bit, another in crayon and the final one in pencil, coming full circle.
Here is another try at capturing the inimitable Kelly Felicia. It is Conté Crayon on Canson Black Drawing paper. I went this route this time around because I thought it would reveal facial planes of light better. It does, but my relative inexperience with white Conté compared to regular pencil is making me wrestle and strain, and it shows. I would call this attempt neither failure nor success. I will try again.
Here is a sketch of my co-worker from the African country Liberia. Some of our colleagues call her Kelly and some call her Felicia. I call her Kelly Felicia, which amuses her.
I admire her immensely. She can do many things well. On the job she is versatile and a consummate professional. She can cook tirelessly, ring a cash register speedily, and break up a logjam in the Dish Pit expeditiously. And she does not complain; she is almost always cheerful.
Attempting her portrait, I am running into the quicksand of trying too hard, because getting this lovely and depth-revealing face just right is a fearsome responsibility. So the compromise I made with my artistic integrity was to do enough sketching of Kelly Felicia to learn how to make a reasonably recognizable face. This portrait was good enough to show her, and she smiled and said, “Oh. That is me.”
But something that is beyond Good is demanded of this remarkable subject. Back to the Drawing Board, then!
One with Clay, Image and Text 