Once you get your "mannequin"
laid out, the fun really begins. If you measured while creating
the stick figure and the mannequin stages of your figure, you
can be pretty confident that you have the proportions correct.
And you can begin to erase the construction lines from the two
previous stages and begin to shade in and add detail to your
figure. Start by adding shading very lightly, you can always
go back and darken it if you need to. And since you'll be laying
down a lot of graphite that will smudge (if you're using a soft
pencil like a 5B), I suggest putting a blank sheet of paper on
your drawing and rest your drawing hand on the blank paper so
that it's between your drawing and your hand. This is especially
handy (ha ha) if you're right handed and you're working on the
left side of the drawing. I begin by adding detail and shading
to the head. |