Hello my friends and welcome to another Tuesday of tutorial!
I am Leonardo Pereznieto and today we will draw the head of a bald eagle.
I begin by taking some measurements from my reference photo.
That´s the width and height of the head and the size of the beak.
And we sketch the general shape of the beak and of the head.
Let me check the height of it, of the beak and then, go over the head.
Very good!
I am sketching very lightly at the beginning so that the lines don´t
get in our way and can be corrected.
Here is the upper part of the beak ... and the eye.
Actually the eye goes a little bit more forward.
I erase it, and measure it, to make sure
it´s right.
It is pretty circular but the upper part is covered by a bony protrusion
that protects it.
That gives it sort of an aggressive look which is part of its personality.
So much for my measurement I moved the eye forward a little bit more.
Ok, this time it looks right.
You can measure all you want but at the end, it needs to look
good.
I think the eye is the final judge.
Let´s leave a small white reflection and fill in the pupil.
For this, I switch to a very soft lead.
A 4B, while for sketching, I´m using an HB:
Which is medium hardness.
And to complete the eye, it has sort of a some angles, on the front and back.
Like this.
The upper part is darker because it´s catching some shadow.
In regards to the photo references, there are a lot of websites, from where
you can get royalty free pictures.
Some are for free and some you pay.
But it is always a good practice to based your art on pictures that you took
yourself, or that you have the rights to use.
Or even better, you can draw from life, or from your imagination.
But even then, it will be helpful to have some reference photos.
As I mentioned earlier, the part that is just about the eye it´s
protruding slightly, and therefore creates a shadow, on what is
under it.
And we begin giving a tone to the beak.
For this I use a hard led,
a 3H.
I´m trying to do this pretty even because the beak is smooth.
And we smudge it with a chamois.
So that it is, more even yet.
Then, we reinforce some shadows.
I place a clean paper under my hand, so that I don't make a mess [laughter].
Now that it is finally, coming right and it miraculously looks clean [laughter].
And we start the feathers with very light strokes, with the hard led,
it can hardly be seen.
Then with a tortillion, I smudge these but at the same time give some shade
and some shape to the feathers.
I should fill in the background at this point because the white head on the white background
doesn´t show at all.
So I´m back to the 4B lead.
The soft one, for a darker background.
And little by little, I fill it in. For the background
I don´t want an even flat surface.
I want some texture, but with no specific shape.
And now that we have this contrast we see that we need to reinforce
many shadows.
Like the opening of the beak and the nostril.
In regards to these little feathers, I am adding some slight shadows,
under some of them to show that these are sticking out, slightly.
Around the eye the eagle has tiny feathers.
We make them like this with little lines.
And we can pull some lights with a fine eraser.
The list of materials that I am using is in the description under the video.
I want to give you, two "heads ups". The first one is that in the next tutorial
I will giving away a beautiful fountain pen.
So, don´t miss it!
And the other one is that I will go back to showing the most light fan art,
in the Fine Art-Tips mobile app.
From the drawings you upload to it.
We did some updates to the apps, so if it is not working for you,
please erase it and download the new one.
Good!
We do the last touches and it´s ready!
I will upload a long version of this tutorial, to my Patreon account.
If you enjoyed it, please give it a LIKE! share it to your friends and subscribe to Fine Art-Tips.
And I will see you, on Tuesday ;)
Subtitled by Grethel Trejo