I stumbled across this picture while surfing the net one day and knew this would be the picture I'd use to draw my first sketch of the year 2000. First order of business was to break out the technique used by one of the greatest masters, Leonardo De Vinci. If it worked for Leo, it can work for me....anyway, it's called drawing through a window pane. Just make a grid (Leonardo used a wooden frame with strings to make the grid) on a piece of transparency paper using a permanent marker. I made my grids 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch.

Then I took a sheet of 11" x 14" Strathmore drawing paper (regular surface) and lightly drew a similar grid, only twice as large (each square measures 1 inch by 1 inch). Next, I simply sat in front of my computer and drew what was in each grid on the screen and sketched it in the coresponding grid on my paper. It's kinda wierd at first, making yourself not think of the whole picture, only individual pieces. But when you're done, if you try to really make sure you only focus on one square at a time, you get a VERY accurate representation of the original picture, only bigger!

Next, I just very carefully erased the lines on the drawing, and fixed the gaps, and voila, you've got a complete accurate sketch of the original!

Now that the sketch is formalized, I cleaned up the borders a little and began to pencil in her hair, starting on the right hand side and working my way up and over to the left (since I'm left handed, that keeps my hand from smearing graphite all over the picture).

The drawing continues to progess, as I filled in more and more hair, and then used a blending snub to create the "sheen" look. At this point the drawing could almost be considered finished. In fact, I debated whether or not to put a gray background behind the picture...

In the end, I did decide to go with the gray background (just used a blending snub and filled in the space...). I think it makes the figure stand out that much more. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. Now if I can just find out who she is....