Jennifer Carpenter as Emily Rose
(The Exorcism of Emily Rose [2005])

Jennifer Carpenter as the titular character in The Exorcism for Emily Rose, I drew this from a publicity still I printed off the internet. And when my printer got done with it, that publicity still was not pretty. But that’s okay. That just gives me an excuse in case the render sucks.

For this render I actually used a different set of pencils, and it gives the picture an overall different flavor. Still using soft leads (4B to 8B), but a different brand. Why didn’t I use the woodless pencils? Well, for one I had another set I got as a Christmas present, and two the woodless ones unfortunately broke because I stupidly dropped them (the fragile bastards!).

This turned out infinitely better than some of the drawings I did previously (Dante and D&D Mage). The whole image looks more natural, more realistic, more subtle, and more defined than those two illustrations. This render looks like a real person, and when I draw purely from my imagination it’s as if there’s a number of subtleties that scream “there is no real life subject to this drawing.” My illustrations feel fantasized in a way that I don’t want them to feel.

Anyway, minor self-criticism: I think I would have been better off darkening the background more (maybe even blanking it out entirely). In the photo, the background was out of focus. I do kinda like the representation that I gave it in the drawing, but I think for composition purposes, a darker background would have proved the correct aesthetic choice.