Stan: Hey guys, welcome to Proko. My name is Stan Prokopenko, and I'm going
to continue doing "The Draftsmen" podcast cover portraits today. Last time I drew Marshall, who is my co-host. Today I'm going to do my self-portrait. The photo I'm going to use is this one. No, just kidding. No, it's actually going to be this one right
here. I think I took this in the mirror, in the
bathroom. I'm using the same materials as last time,
just a graphite pencil, a black wing with bristol pape Gonna do it in the same style as before. So if you guys missed the last video, go and
check it out, How to Draw a Stylized Portrait, No Shading Okay, I'm going to start with the big shapes,
stylized, slightly cartoony. So, I'm not going for accuracy, I'm going
for recognizability and just trying to make it look kind of cool, fun dexterity, whimsical
strokes. Got to make sure that a collar fits in there. If my neck is here, the collar is gonna be
all the way down there, just got to bring it up Plumb lines, so I just use the plumb line
on the photo, plumb line on my drawing and they didn't match up. And so I know that whoa, back up, gotta re-measure
some of my lines and fix things before I go any further So the plumb line I used was from the corner
right here, the top of the head down. On my drawing it lines up with this part,
on the photo, this corner is further out. I think what it is I kind of exaggerated this
too much. And I don't think I want to exaggerate that
curve. Maybe, or maybe not. But that was not a deliberate decision there. So I'm going to fix it. Definitely want to make my neck thinner. I mean, I don't want to, I want to make it
thicker. But you know, I don't have a thick neck. So if I'm going to exaggerate things, I'm
going to make my neck thinner than it already is Oh, and I've definitely made this way too
high up. That was another...it was a horizontal plumb
line. So if I go from the bottom of the chin out,
it goes to, like, right here is where the chin is supposed to be. I had the neck going all the way up to here. So way too high up. But the chin is down here, the neck down here. I probably want to make my hair a little bit
larger, kind of exaggerate this swooshy shape, kind of a receded hairline. It's not receding, it's done. It's done receding. I always correct people, like it's been like
this since I was, like, 16. So it's not receding any more. I'm using these sharp angles a lot here just
so I could design some shapes. Probably will soften some of these out because
I mean, I'm not that angular, but it helps me put things in the right place. If I break things up into these larger planes,
right...you guys have seen simplified planar drawings of the head where things are just,
like, blocky, blocky forms. It's kind of how I'm thinking right now, I
don't want to think too organic, just large blocks And that actually makes it a little easier
for me to see some things, see relationships with these angles better. I might have actually...yeah, gotta redo that. I think the brow ridge I put too high up,
it's another mistake. I'm kind of jumping ahead a little bit here. Jumping the gun, I'm doing these contour lines
when I haven't even established the center line, thirds I'm approaching this more of like a sketch
rather than like a traditional portrait drawing. When I start a longer portrait drawing, I'll
do the biggest shapes first, break it down. Right now, I'm just being a little more loose
with it. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I should get some of those basics in
there, get the core in there and then come back and break it up. So I'm going to start with general shape like
that. I'll add the cheek later. So I'm going to exaggerate the length of my
forehead, obviously. And then dropping this down like that will
actually help with two things, make the hair bigger and also kind of this upward angle
in here for the receded hairline. Definitely a strong angle downward from the
bottom of the wing of the nose to the bottom of the ball of the nose. People say I have big ears, but I don't think
I do. Guess I'll just make sure I don't make them
too small. Gotta make the neck even thinner, like, right
through here just a little bit. Last time when I was doing Marshall's portrait,
I made the eyes on different levels. So I gotta make sure I don't make that same
mistake twice. So triple check my angles. And so I got the angle of the chin. It's not perfectly horizontal, right, it's
a little bit angled this way so the mouth will be like that Can't see the other nostril but from nostril
to nostril, it will be like that. Tear ducts, eyebrows all at that same angle. So boom, tear duct. Can even do that with the top of the lids,
same angle. Okay, so I found the placement of the tear
duct, placement of the top of lid and then placement of the right side of the eye based
off of the contour. There's a little bit of a gap, and now I know
that the eye kind of falls right between these three spots Soon I just kind of have to get the shape
as close as possible within those boundaries. Now, I also wanted to change where I'm looking. I did the same thing with Marshall where I
kind of redirected the gaze back to towards the camera So I want to do that with this one as well. And I'm not gonna make me looking right at
the camera, but just a little bit, maybe like, this way just to the side of the camera. Something like that seems good. Now there's a little strange, now I get to
draw this pathetic mustache. I'm going to add a little bit of variation
between the value of the mustache in here, a little bit lighter and thinner lines. I think my pencil was getting kind of dull
and all my lines are just thick. This mouth is beating me up. I think I'm over complicating it. Okay, so now I'm starting to get a little
more confidence here. Some of the shapes I'm designing in the beard,
I'm liking more. And now once I get an area that I like, I
can kind of push that towards other areas. I wasn't liking this area at all. And so it was really hard to draw things around
it. So I might redo the mustache after I'm done
with the beard to bring it all together. Sometimes if you don't like an area, you just
have to back away, do something else, do another area. Hopefully, that's a little more successful
and then that'll give you that boost of confidence to do the other areas. It could also inform your decisions in the
other areas, if you have something that's working This photo exposes my insecurity a little
bit, this little gap right here. Also, this little patch right here that doesn't
get filled in. One day, I will be able to grow a full beard. I found that I've had the most success with
hair and things like that, where there's a lot of little patterns when I don't overwork
it. When I kind of just go with my gut and just
kind of design shapes without overthinking. And it just ends up being better when I just
kind of trust my gut to make shapes. When I'm really timid and I'm unsure about
where I'm going, I'm trying to measure the proportions too much, the design ends up being
super boring, and I end up having to redo it Like right there, I wasn't really thinking,
I just kind of put something in there and it...yeah, maybe it'll work. I want to make sure that the styles match
with this drawing and the one I did of Marshall, so I'm going to compare. And it'll be kind of like this, on the cover
we'll be kind of facing each other like that. A good balance should actually be more towards
the confidence side. Marshall: Yes. Stan: This is this is my opinion. Marshall: And it was borne out by their research. Stan: Oh, okay. Marshall: The confidence makes you do better. Stan: Yes, I'm right again. Marshall: Yeah.And you can make yourself more confident by
talking to yourself. But don't tell yourself I will kick butt,
I will rock, I will be better than ever because that will set you up for a fall. That's hubris. Stan: But what if you can handle the falls? That's okay then. Marshall: Yeah. Stan: Like failure is okay, you can say, "I'm
going to do this, I'm going to rock it," and then you've just freaking fail. And then you're like, "All right, whatever,
that's fine. I'm confident enough in myself that I know
I'm going to improve, I'm gonna get better and I will eventually conquer this." So, definitely, I need to get some heavier
contours on here, more texture. I think I was definitely using the softer
black wing for a lot of these darks. So, I'll get that in there. So I'm going to jump in here in the hair and
try to design some of these shapes. I'll get back into the eyes. I think they're in the right spot. I might have to figure out the size. This one might be a little bit bigger than
this one, but it's really close. So once I can jump back in here, I'll make
those decisions but it's close. I'm actually going to keep this on the side
here, just as reference. I think I drew this a little bit too high
up. This needs to be lower all the way over here
and maybe a little bit fuller in the cheek. I think I made myself a little skinnier. It's some wishful thinking. Yeah, that looks better. Let me do the hair now. I'm going to start on the left side and go
right because I have a bad habit of smudging my hand across And if I go this way, I'm just gonna be smudging
everything. So do things on the left side of my hand,
and just like with the last drawing, I want to keep it linear. Usually, the way I would approach hair is
by thinking of the values first. So for example in here, this is dark, then
you got some highlights coming across and then you got dark at the top. I would just use the side of my pencil, fill
that in large shapes of value. And then I would come in and kind of add some
texture onto it. Because I'm not going to try to be tonal with
this, I'm just trying to do everything with lines I actually don't even care if it's three-dimensional
or not. I just wanted a nicely designed shape. So I'm approaching this differently than I
usually do. I want to make sure my lines aren't just spread
out evenly, you know, just like line, line, line, line, line like zebra stripes. I want to have areas where they're, you know,
much closer together like here, and areas where there's a lot of open space. Maybe like right in here, I'm going to keep
these open, don't add anything else in here. And then maybe fill it in more here, a little
more congested in this area where the lines are really close, and that just adds a little
more variety. I don't mind having areas like right in here,
where you know, in the photo, it's obviously really dark, but I could keep it light. And as long as I have this contour really
heavy, it'll feel like the head is closed because of that heavy outline. And I can keep the shadow open, kind of let
it breathe. Are we just closing in that gap a little bit,
that little bald spot? Still a little bit. And actually, I'm thinking that the shape
of the head that I created isn't very accurate. I'm not seeing in my head going out and getting
really wide at the top. And especially I feel like I've thinned out
my jaw and when I make the head thick like that it, gives me this cone shape which I
don't think I have. I think it should be wider in the middle but
then kind of come back in. So I'm going to change this contour a little
bit right here and go inward. Okay, yeah, I think that works better. Yeah, and I think one reason this eye looks
a little smaller is because I probably pushed this in too much So, if I give this eye a little bit more room,
like that, it will be better. Yeah, that's much better. Yeah, so widening the jaw a little bit in
here, that helped. Widening the cheekbones and eye socket out
a little bit helped. Definitely getting closer to a likeness. With the ears, you know, I don't have to be
completely accurate with the shapes in there. As long as the main shape of the ears is mine
and the size relationship to the rest of the head is mine, it'll be fine. So I'm just gonna try to make sure I don't
overwork the shapes, just create interesting shapes Now the planes of the nose, I could see some
halftones all through here, but you know, I don't want to render for reasons I said
in the previous episode. I want it to look like a drawing even when
it's shrunken down to a tiny postage stamp. The only way to do that is to make it very
linear. So if I start rendering and starting to do
these gradations, it'll lose that effect of being a drawing And so I'm going to do stuff like this instead,
where I, like, a plane on the top of this and the wing of the nose, just be like a little
square with some lines in it. Very simple. And then down here, I'm seeing a little plane,
and it will act as a design element. It definitely doesn't make it three-dimensional. The only thing that will make it three-dimensional
is if I actually start shading. And when I say shading, I mean, like, gradations
of tone. I understand that, like, hatching is kind
of technically a form of shading. But I guess I'm using it to describe specifically
gradations of tone while keeping it linear. It's like yeah, I'm adding tone, obviously,
every time I put down a line, they can act as shade or shadow. But when I think of the word shading, to me,
it means using tone to describe three-dimensional form So that's what I think of it as. And so when I'm doing stuff like this, this
isn't really, to me, trying to describe three-dimensional form This is just, like, texture, or just lines. I don't know. I don't consider that shading really, but
I know maybe technically it is. I wanted to specify it because some people
in the last episode were calling me out. Like that what I just did there, technically
that's shading. But to me, I'm just putting lines down. I'm not trying to render this as, like, a
brow ridge with a, you know, a bottom plane and really showing the curvature of the brow
ridge as it goes this way, and this way, and this way, and over the cheekbones, over the
nose. All those little subtleties I would usually
render. That's what I'm trying to avoid with these
drawings. Or maybe not even avoid, maybe just minimize. It was interesting that a lot of you in the
comments on the last one mentioned that, like, you're trying to kind of do the same thing
with your style where you're like, trying to make it cartoony, I guess. I'm wondering why. It's interesting because I do find this attractive. But I'm curious why other people are trying
to get their drawings to be this way. I mean, is it because it seems more approachable,
like, oh, maybe I could do this. Or is it just that it's more fun to look at
than a realistically shaded rendered fully drawing, you know, like, photorealistic sort
of thing. If you don't know how to do a photorealistic
drawing, I wouldn't necessarily recommend to you to stylize your work yet and try to
go for a specific style. I would say learn how to make it as realistic
as possible first, then you can stylize it however you want. And it'll be much easier to stylize it once
you know the science of how things really work. Because you know what rules you're breaking
and why you're breaking them. You can make very deliberate decisions, and
you could start breaking rules in ways that you've never really seen other people break
them while still being deliberate about it and making it look good, versus if you don't
really know the way things are supposed to work and you just break things, they'll just
look wrong. They don't look like you stylize it, it just
looks like you messed up. Like I didn't like that. I was trying to add that, like, a rhythm in
here for the plane of the cheekbone. And I think I could still do that if I have
it in other areas. Like I definitely don't see that. You know, if I'm going to be linear, and I
want to indicate the plane of the head here, I can't do it with halftones like I would
with tone, but I can with a line to indicate an edge. And that's kind of what I'm trying to do here,
is just indicate some lines or some edges of, like, the cheekbone. I might have overdone it with some of them,
maybe this one. Remove that one and this one. These are starting to look much more similar. I don't have a mirror but holding it up to
the camera, I can see it's reversed the way I'm seeing it. I'm creating more darks in the hair. I don't know if it's just me trying to make
it more real or just I want more contrast between the light and the dark, because I
can keep it linear and still have lots of contrasts, right? The dark lines are thick, and dark, and heavy,
and the light areas are very light. I think I want that. This area feels really good to me now. It feels very complete, like a nice shape
in here and other areas just feel a little too patchy, a kind of like, clean things up. Or not clean but join things together a little
bit more. Create order, you know, like right here I'm
grouping this, all of these shapes into, like, one triangle And then in here, I could try to group things
together into a more unified shape. Okay, I think this is the time now where I
need to step away, come back tomorrow, take a look at what I don't like, make some more
minor adjustments. But I think it's almost done. While I'm gone, you guys can watch this clip
from "The Draftsmen" podcast which this whole thing is for "The Draftsmen" podcast is going to be out
in a few weeks. If you're subscribed to this channel or if
you subscribe to the newsletter at proko.com/draftsmen, you will be notified when it comes out. All right, enjoy this clip. Why are you doing this podcast, Marshall? Marshall: Let me tell you why I'm doing this
podcast is because you invited me to do it. That is the reason I'm here, there is no other. Stan: Okay, come on, there has to be... Marshall: Do you want a longer answer? Stan: I mean, I want a better answer. Marshall: Okay, I... Stan: Something will make people feel like
you actually care about being here. Marshall: Well, the way you presented it to
me is that in the six years that we've known each other.. Stan: Yeah. Marshall: ...we've had so many conversations,
phone conversations. And some of the things that we've talked about,
some of the conversations were worth having. Stan: Yeah. Marshall: I mean, they were the kind of thing
that were worth even recording because they would be to the advantage of students to be
listening to it. Stan: Yeah. We would just brainstorm things and discuss
these principles of art on the phone and all that I've forgotten everything we talked about. Marshall: Yeah. Stan: Okay, guys, and I'm back. And when I got in this morning, I actually
liked it better than I did when I left last night So, I think it's almost done. The only thing that I'm going to change, I
think, maybe once I start I'm going to change more things, but the only thing that I'm planning
on changing right now is some of these lines, I feel are still too distracting. My wife actually said it looks like it aged
me a little bit. And coming back this morning, I kind of agree. I think some of these lines in here are aging
me a little bit too much. I'm not going to erase all of them, but I
feel like maybe this one. Yeah. And maybe this one, and this one. And then just kind of tap on these, make them
just a little bit lighter. And then probably this one right here, just
really dark. I put a lot of lines going across this way. And so that's probably making the bag under
my eye just a little bit too much. I'm just going to redo those halftones. Okay. It's pretty close. I don't have anything else. Some of my coworkers said that this looks
like GQ Stan. When I showed it to them last night, they
said that looks like I made me more manly. I didn't try to. In fact, I think I made the jaw a little bit
thinner. I definitely made the neck skinnier, so I'm
not really sure. I guess I could have naturally just tried
to make things...I didn't notice myself making those decisions to make it more masculine,
but let me know in the comments. Do you guys think I made myself more manly,
somehow? Maybe it's some of the...maybe, like, just
the fact that I put more stronger angles, you know, straighter lines. But I kind of do that with all of my drawings. You know, I like to use angles. So that wasn't a deliberate choice to make
it more manly. That was just because I like using planes. But yeah, anyway, let me know. Am I not seeing something? And that will be it. Make sure you guys check out "The Draftsmen
Show," podcast that's going to be coming out in a few weeks. So make sure you're subscribed here and to
the newsletter at proko.com/draftsmen. And you will be notified when that comes out,
it's gonna be a lot of fun. We're going to try to make it very useful
for you guys, not just fun. We're going to base all of our conversations
off of your feedback. So when the episodes do come out, please share
your feedback with us. Tell us what you want to hear more of, what
you want to hear less of, that sort of thing. So that's it. Thank you guys for watching, and I will see
you next time. I won't see you really, but you'll see me...I'll
see you in the comments.
