Two views of Einstein
A try at comparing two ideas on facial shadow.
When I began attempting portraits I bought a book called “The Artist’s Complete Guide to DRAWING THE HEAD” by William L. Maughan. This is a really good book, full of useful information by a career artist and teacher.
However, as I gained a little experience I had diffculty with one piece of his advice. He obviously holds very strongly to the idea of making a big difference in sharpness and tone between cast shadows and natural shadows. For instance the shadow cast by the nose should be hard edged and very dark.
I have never been very comfortable with this idea. I can cope with the hard edged shadow cast by the chin, but that nose shadow, even in his excellent drawings, tends to make everybody look a bit like a relative of Adolf Hitler.
So, I have taken the very contrasty photo of Albert Einstein, which looks as if it was taken with flash and has very hard edges, and I have done a pencil drawing sticking to the hard shadows, and a soft pastel version, minus hard edges.
(I had difficulty with the pastel version as I had mistakenly picked up a piece of sugar paper instead of pastel paper. Instead of abandoning the picture as soon as I realised that the pastel was not going to blend well without taking the surface off the paper, I soldiered on, with an indifferent result.)
However, even with an unsuitable surface, I prefer the softer look of pastels. For me a pastel portrait somehow says “Look, here’s a human being.” Whereas the harder pencil drawing just says “Look, here’s a clever drawing of a human being”.
Though I am prepared to accept that my pencil drawing skills could be better!