Week 43 was “Chiaroscuro Faces Week.” Deep shadows are fun, because the visual and emotional impact is often inversely proportional to the effort. This is definitely a realm where knowing when to take the drawing away from yourself pays off.
My son thought this was the sketch of the week: “I like the way middle right seems to lean in a little. Makes it look the spookiest.”
I sorta preferred this one from earlier in the week:
This sketch was the hardest—in that I erased everything and started over several times—and the easiest, once I stopped listening to a brain that was telling me “this is an eye! this is a nose! those are lips, you idiot!” and just put black where I saw black. I sorta love how the lighting make so clear that there’s a skull under that skin and meat. If anything, my failure here is that I didn’t go for blacker blacks.
If you can turn off your brain and just let your eye tell your hand where the black goes, hardshadowed, dramatic chiaroscuro actually almost makes for the easiest sketches.