Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Zooey Deschanel pencil drawing


This is a pencil portrait of actress Zooey Deschanel (pronounced day-shun-ell ) requested by my son Kody! This is just a little gift for him, he doesn't ask me for much so I was glad to draw this.
Zooey's older sister "Emily" is the star of Fox's TV drama "BONES". They have very similar features.
•11" x 14" Strathmore 300 series smooth bristol
•2B & H pencils




My 15 year old son has a secret crush on a another actress. He pulled me aside and asked if I could do a nice drawing of her! He knows his father wouldn't turn down the chance to draw another beautiful woman:) :) :).
Here's an opportunity to show up close how I assemble a portrait.
They don't all start out with super smooth skin and sparkly eyes!
Here you can see I used an "H" pencil to lightly map out the skin areas.( later I will smooth it all over with some rolled-up tissues).
Everything here was done with the "H" lead with the exception of the eye detail...There I used a 0.3mm 2B lead in a mechanical pencil. These areas will also be smoothed over with a tortillion ( paper blending stump).
I should have more tomorrow.
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•UPDATE: Trying to save space on my Blogs front page. I've been replacing the progress uploads with a shot of multiple images. This latest upload reflects roughly 5 hours of progress.

11 comments:

Freshyfresh said...

Your son seems to have a good taste!:3 I can see another masterpiece coming!=)
And I like when you post the step by step progress, it can be helpful to learn!:)

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Thank you for doing this so much, when i did my portraits i would aways just go in and try to make them shiny right away, and i would try to do that with Q-tips, also did you get my email?

Anonymous said...

nice, let the magic begin, by the way i can´t believe that caricature was not kate perry is just like her( i don´t like her songs).
Rubens, Brazil

Unknown said...

How do you do those backgrounds

Patrick McMicheal said...

Hi Forrest! I did not receive an email from you. Please try again!
The Background? Simple......just fill in the area with a consistent tone and smooth it out with some rolled-up tissues ( rub in a small circular motion) Then add some random shapes with a darker (2B) pencil and smooth them out as well! It's actually the easiest part and many people ask me about this.

Nico Di Mattia said...

Killer work Patrick!!!!!!!!! Love it!!!! I´ll be visiting very often man!!
Cheers.

Hammerson said...

It's awesome, you really outdid yourself with this one!
There's always a large dose of soul, warmth and humanity in your portraits, and that's what makes them special, together with great skill and technical perfection.

I think Zooey would be thrilled to see this portrait :)

Nico said...

Fantastic likeness, great job! I love Zooey!

Cynthia said...

I bet your son loves this! :)

Johanna said...

Wow! You're so talented! Totally amazing!