Asia Argento
(Actress)

Yes, I went back to drawing from photographs off of IMDb. Here we have Italian actress/director Asia Argento, and in the drawing we have yet another case in point that subtlety is everything. That it’s not so much the individual shapes, but also how they fit together. I can ramble endlessly on why I’m disappointed in how this render turned out—where I goofed because I took a shortcut (or two), because I had a makeshift pencil sharpener (a knife), because I lost momentum when I realized the render was not turning out very well—but I’ll keep it short. I should have done a warm up sketch to get better idea of the subtleties of her face, how to render them and their relationship to one another (all things are relative), and how to frame it on my paper. Darkening the shadows on her for a wider, more interesting, range of value wouldn’t hurt either, but I won’t go there this time.

Overall, the shapes and shading work (at least they did before I lost interest), they just don’t fit together very well. The head doesn’t look too bad, but it’s not positioned on her neck correctly (and her neck isn’t positioned on her body right). The shading for her hair? Again, not bad, but I didn’t follow through for the rest of the image. Had I worked up to this render, I could have represented the photograph far more effectively than I did and would have stuck with it longer. It might be wise to stick with an individual picture and sketch/render it multiple times (using different styles) to get a feel for the subject and how to draw it. It’ll also give me more practice at being consistent. We’ll see.

Six Years Later: Asia Argento, Take Two