Pastel drawing of dad

[Lewis MacKenzie]

Muhammad: dude, you are a hard task master Do you comment at CA.org, by any chance?

Steven: You are way too kind, thank you.

Seriously, though - thank you both. These are great comments and have given me a lot to think about. The ears and the electric blue lick of hair have been annoying me about this drawing for a while. I need to work more on drawing ears so that they are better integrated into the structure of the head, rather than plonked on the sides as I often tend to do. That said, I think I would have worked more on those areas if we hadn't been called for dinner when we had (excuses, excuses). I hadn't noticed the issue with the warm tone on the neck, however, and I think that you're absolutely correct about that, Steven. I agree, Muhammad, that I may have to punch the darks more here and there, and I wonder if that issue with flatness is also the cause of the cheekbones appearing too wide (although I'm also worried that I may just have drawn the eyes too close together).

You've both made me want to return to this one, but I'm always a bit worried about approaching an old drawing without the subject present. I'd be interested to hear what peoples' thoughts are with respect to this - would you work back into something like this from memory?

[Muhammad Sida]

You saw my thread! Dude you're the one being kind now
You comment there too?

As Robert De Nero once said (when there is doubt there is no doubt.) 'course that was just a movie I highly doubt he had painting in mind but I found it to be quite true when I paint something.

If you have an absaloutly clear image of your subject in your head and you're sure then by all means do it from memory but if you are like most of us and the image is not so clear "fuzzy" in your minds eye then don't. Some great painters could do things from memory but that came after years and years of experience and practice, to my opinion the images in their heads just got more and more clearer and they could see their paitings/drawings before they put a stroke, that my friend is a completely different level of freedom that anyone one day would wish to achieve

As of the eyes I didnt want to say anything about them because it might be an assymatry issue...my eyes defy the 3 eye rule so i didnt want say anything but if your dad doesn't have it then you should work a bit on the eyes and the positioning of his right ear. That should fix things.