Krita recently added a charcoal brush set to it's tools and I decided to go way out of my comfort zone and do an entire portrait with them and smudging tools. This took about 6 hours to do which is not long for me. I have been encouraged to "loosen up" by a couple people and this time they were referring to my drawings and paintings. I am not sure if this qualifies as loose.... it was loose for me at least.
I do have a think for Kafka, I even travelled to Prague to see his museum. there are not many photos of him and I chose a younger version of him as reference. I sort of wanted to show him more as a young man and not a great writer of disturbing stories.
I a not not sure I really got a good likeness. I wanted to change his expression from the stagnant, dour one to something more engaging to the viewer. Nothing extreme just a shift in focus. I played with the lighting too. I tried not to be too obsessed with the hair as I tend to want to draw each one in ink and pencil.
The charcoals were hard to control which helped keep me from my habit of going into super small details.
I have included the original photo for comparison, not that my sketch lives up to such scrutiny.
