Stan: Hey guys, welcome to Proko.
My name is Stan Prokopenko.
We need a cover image for our podcast that we're going to be releasing soon.
I decided to film it.
I'm going to do these in graphite on, I believe, this is, like, Strathmore...it's just Bristol
paper.
It's got a little bit of texture on it, but not too much.
But yeah, I like these black winged pencils.
This is the softer version, I'm probably also going to use this one.
This one's a little harder.
This one's softer.
The black wings don't have the range like most graphite pencils where they go from,
like, 9H to 9B.
These just have two.
I'm going to be starting with Marshall.
This is the photo I like, but I think I'm probably going to change his neck so that
instead of leaning like this, he's going to be kind of leaning forward like that.
I'm just going to start by just trying to get the proportions correct.
I'm going for, like, a slightly caricatured version of these, not too much, just a tiny bit
Kind of Rockwell-esque.
You know, how Rockwell would exaggerate people's features just a tiny bit, I could kind of
do something like this, very sharp corner and brow ridge.
So I'm going to start by maybe exaggerating how, you know, the thin longness of it.
And then I could add more to the back of the head if I feel like I've gone too far.
Of course the beard.
I could see definitely, this is longer.
And then some of these shapes, I'm exaggerating.
Okay, placement of the ear, I'm going to follow the brow and that will be the base of the
ear and that actually comes up a little bit from there.
Didn't notice Marshall has small ears.
It looks normal here.
Maybe it looks small just because his nose is large.
Anyway, definitely shouldn't make his ears large because that would not be his type,
but I am going to lengthen the nose.
I definitely know Marshall has a larger nose, and because he's leaning back, it's shortening
it a little bit.
And I want to kind of get that, make sure it's obvious that, hey, this guy's got a long nose
And it's not just long, it's large.
Sorry, Marshall, I like your nose.
So this podcast that I'm doing this drawing for, it's not out yet.
Marshall, who is the guy I'm drawing right now, he's my co-host.
The podcast is going to be called Draftsmen.
It's going to be available on this YouTube channel and also as audio on all the podcast platforms
We're going to be covering a wide range of topics related to artists, just stuff that
you can listen to while you're drawing, while you're driving.
The episodes are very casual.
We didn't really plan them out too much.
You did submit your questions and stuff and we use them as inspiration for the topics
we're going to talk about.
And we talked about stuff like, you know, finding your style, and, you know, finding
motivation and stuff like that.
But we also dive into educational stuff like, you know, how to be a good student, and even
things like technology like AI and VR.
And I think in a future episode, Marshall is going to try VR for the first time.
So we're just going to do fun stuff.
It'll be a little bit of a mix of, you know, entertainment plus education plus inspiration.
It should be really fun.
So you guys, check it out when it's ready.
You can subscribe to the Proko newsletter to get informed about that, or just stay subscribed
to this channel, and you'll see the episodes published.
Marshall: You present the artwork, "We'd like to change this."
"Okay, I'll change that."
And presented again, they say, "I'd like to change it even more."
"Okay, I'll change that."
And then they told you to change it a certain way and you did it that way, and they say,
"Yeah, that's the way I want it."
And you say, "Yeah, I'll do it that way."
And you give it to them saying, "No, no.
I've changed my mind," and they can kill you because they want apples and then you give
them apples and they say, "No, I think I feel more like oranges."
And you give them oranges and they say, "You know, let's try papaya."
And it goes all over the place, and those are known as illustrator killers, or to graphic
designers, and it's a completely irresponsible way to work.
But if you do that when you're a beginner and you get used to the kind of difficulty
that is going to be working for money, it's not altogether bad.
It does strengthen you.
I've heard bands talk about how when they play for drunk audiences who don't care about
their music, they come out stronger, because they've got the chops of a difficult audience.
Stan: As I put these features, I want to make sure I'm keeping the angle.
You can indicate angles in the beard, and one of those angles is this angle right in
here of the bottom plane.
It's nice to show that a nice strong angle parallel to the front of the face.
So I'm wondering if I should increase the size of the ball of the nose or the bridge of the nose
I feel like I exaggerated the size of the ball of the nose too much, and that didn't
leave enough room for the bridge of the nose.
So definitely helps to understand all the different pieces in here, because the photo,
it's not the best quality, it's a little blurry, the nose seems a little flat lit, so it doesn't
reveal the forms.
But if you understand what the anatomy is there, you can take the super subtle indications
of the forms and understand what is actually happening even if it's really, really subtle.
Because this is going to be a cover image for a podcast, most people will just see it
on their phones because that's where people listen to podcasts.
And so it's gonna be a tiny little square with both of our portraits on it.
So if I shade it, it's just going look like a...possibly just look like a photo because
it's so small, if I do a good job.
So I want to make it really obvious that this is not a photo of us, this is a drawing, and
the best way to do that is to keep it linear.
And so I have to make sure my lines are interesting enough because I can't just rely on 3D form
and rendering to make it good.
I have to design my shapes to be nice and my strokes needs to be dynamic.
Definitely want it to look like Marshall, but I also want it to look cool as well.
I want it to look nice, not just realistic or not just accurate.
His mustache is mostly just like a dark shape, but I'm gonna try to put, like, lines indicating hair
And I'm not just going to go like doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, a bunch of lines.
I want to design patches, different angles and zigzags in a way that it kind of looks interesting
First things first, make sure it's in the right spot.
Before I put all the patches of hair, let's find the center line of this muzzle.
His mouth is open, and I want to be able to indicate that without shading.
I might still have to just make this whole thing black, the inside of the mouth.
So I could fill in areas of black while still keeping it linear, you know, think of comic
books or inking.
You can indicate form but it's through line.
Yeah, so definitely looks more like the mouth is open when you fill that shape in.
I'm going to lightly put in a few notes of that mustache, just so I have the placement
and then I can go back in and redesign those patches a little bit better later if I want
to, but just having little placeholders there will help me design stuff around it.
And also just help me make sure that things are in the right place before I finalize.
I think it looks like Marshall, I don't know.
Sometimes, I know when I draw portraits, I feel like it looks like the person and then,
like, I come back the next day and it looks nothing like them.
I don't know if you guys ever experience that.
But I've also had the opposite where I think it looks really bad and then I leave for the
day and then I come back and I'm like, "Hey, this actually is not that bad."
So sometimes, you just need to get away from your drawing to really get a new perspective on it
But right now, I feel like it looks like Marshall a little bit.
Maybe it's just because Marshall has such a unique face that it's easy to capture his likeness
We'll see how I do it in my self-portrait.
I'm definitely not as unique looking as Marshall.
Everyone's always telling me that I look like someone else.
But yeah, one thing I want to do is make his neck go forward a little bit.
So I'm going to look at a different photograph pretty high up, it's actually going to start curving back
So the good thing about making it just a little bit cartoony or a little exaggerated is that
you can get away with, like, doing some cartoony things to the neck or any part of it.
Before I go any further, I do want to make sure that I'm happy with the general proportions
before I start like, you know, going in there with the eye and finalizing some of these
shapes.
So a good thing to do is just to step back a little bit and think like, "Do I want to
exaggerate things a little more?"
Yeah, from looking at another photograph here, I noticed his head is a little rounder, and
that actually intensifies that brow ridge shape that I was trying to exaggerate earlier.
Yeah, that looks a little more like his head shape.
His cheekbone or his cheek pads, right here, there's a little bit of a cushion at the bottom.
So I definitely want to make sure that I am showing this piece right here, kind of makes
him a little more jolly.
Also, this photo I'm using is...Marshall is a little younger than he is now.
I have to decide, like, do I want to age him, make him look a little more like how he does
now?
Probably.
A lot of that is going to be through the eyes because his eyes look way younger in this
one, but it's easier to age someone.
You could draw a youthful person and then just kind of add things to it and then it'll
look older.
So I'm going to start with just getting that structure of the eye sockets in and then I
can come back and age him a little bit from the other photos if I want to.
Oh, actually, I wanted to change the gaze.
He's looking out up into the left and I kind of want him to look straight ahead.
I have to move the iris just more towards the camera.
Coming in here on the nose and breaking it up into front plane, side plane, bottom plane.
Actually this shape that I was talking about down here is actually a little more exaggerated on him
I didn't bring it out enough.
And when you have a linear drawing, you can choose where you put the thick and dark line weight
In the shapes that you want to exaggerate, you put the dark lines.
You don't have to put it around the whole contour.
In fact, being picky is better.
Also because this shape is in shadow, I could make it darker just because it'll indicate,
you know, maybe a little bit of a shadow in that area.
I think I'm going to switch to this softer pencil now.
I'm starting to put in those really heavy accents.
I don't want to have to press too hard.
I'm not shading, but I feel like every once in awhile, if I just kind of smear my finger
across and it adds, like, a smudge and it makes that whole area a little darker.
I want to keep it graphic, that's really the purpose here, it's not that I don't want to,
like, cheat and shade.
There's nothing wrong with that.
If I feel like just making a whole area darker is going to make it...you know, improve it,
it's fine.
You know, I'm kind of determining the style here so I could play around.
Definitely want the nose to pop forward and so I'm going to make this outline very obvious.
In the photo, it's kind of blending in a little bit.
Like if I was to do a painting of this and be very tonal, I would use very similar value
with the nose and the cheek back there, you know, a little bit darker back there, but
I wouldn't put a sharp edge.
It would be kind of lost, especially in here by the ball of the nose.
I want to keep this really loose as well.
So kind of some areas keeping the lines a little scratchy, doing this sort of thing,
keeping it expressive in my line work.
You know, the eyes aren't the best there if we had to do that but, you know, maybe in
the hair and kind of the cheekbones.
You know, areas where it's like if I put a little scratch, it's like, "Who cares?
It's a forehead."
But in the eyes, you want to try to be precise.
I definitely want to have areas of dark, filled in linearly, still having a very scratchy quality to it
This top part of the hair, or the back part of the hair is a big area of dark.
Also the mustache and then it kind of fades into more light at the beard.
The beard is lighter than the skin but I'm not going to show that difference because
then I'd have to shade the skin and I'm not going to do that.
I really have to just work with a graphic quality kind of light and dark and that's
it and then the hair is a big area of dark, and so I'm going to go in there now and fill
in patches of dark and I'm going to do it all linearly, trying to design interesting
lines.
And I don't know if you guys could tell, if you guys can see it in the video but there's
a lot of noise coming in through because of the paper.
I kind of like that.
I'm using the side of the pencil to kind of to do my lines, and that's creating noise.
I like that look, it's kind of...it reminds me a little bit of the effect that Fechin
gets with his drawings.
It's very linear, but then there's qualities of three-dimensionality in it.
I'm not going to try to get that sort of rendering in there, like the subtleties that he gets,
but his strokes have a lot of texture to them.
I'm going to clean up some of these shapes that I put in here.
In the beard, I'm going to still indicate it with line but I'm not going to be so heavy
with it, I'm not going to fill it in.
I'm just going to spread the lines out a little bit so that it stays looking like it's white.
Just subtle indications.
Since I'm designing all these little hairs in here, I want to try to connect them together
and create a flow.
So you can see in here, there's this dark spot and then that connects kind of to this
little patch and that connects everything to here.
And then that goes this way.
And I'm going to do a similar thing in here from the corner of the mouth, it's kind of
bringing this shape, creating little flow, and trying to add variety everywhere.
As I do some of these lighter halftones, I'm going to go back to the harder pencil.
And I'm only adding a few areas of these little cross hatching lines just to indicate, like,
where the form turns a little bit but I'm not going to render it.
They serve as a design element.
At this point, I'm just going to be jumping around and just adding things based on how I feel
It's like needs a little bit of dark here, light here, just, like, fixing little shapes,
but I'm not going to take it to more of like a detailed finish than this, this is kind
of the look I'm going for.
I like the scruffiness of the beard.
It's a little bit cleaner, more clean cut on there but I like adding a little bit...that's
part of kind of like I said I was going to age them a little bit.
That does that a little bit.
I think at this point, it's best for me to step away and come back tomorrow, make sure
I'm still happy with it and see which areas jump out at me then.
You can see my face.
You can see Marshall's face.
Marshall, why do you hate your face so much?
Marshall: Oh, I don't hate my face.
Stan: You do.
Every time I mention your face and I'm like, "How do you want to be...you know, what kind
of wall do you want behind you?"
And you're just like, "Oh, anything that will distract from my face."
What the hell?
You got such an interesting face.
Marshall: I don't dislike my face, I like my face.
Stan: Why do you want to hide it with clutter behind you?
And then I said, "Well, this white horse behind you is almost the same color as your skin,
so your face gets lost in it."
But you're like, "Oh, that's good.
That's good."
Marshall: I don't mind.
I don't mind that my face gets lost.
It's not my strong suit.
I don't dislike it but it's not like what I really feel like I have to offer.
Stan: All right, I'm back, refreshed.
The first thing I noticed when I stepped back in today was that I felt like the eyes were
a little bit off axis.
And this is something I saw just from the first moment I glanced at this.
It was more of a gut instinct.
It wasn't like I was measuring from the photo.
It was just I looked at it and boom.
If it feels off, there's usually something that is actually off.
I feel like this needs to go up.
I might need to even raise the eyebrow a little bit.
I mean, I know I established that angle in the beginning, but it's become more horizontal
from tear duct to tear duct.
I have to just wipe the whole thing out.
Here goes.
Can't get it back to white but I'm going to have to make it work.
Okay, so following the angle, the tear duct is now going to be up here.
Used to be down here.
Yeah, that feels better.
Cool.
Well, I'm glad I did that, because it would have bugged me forever.
I also wasn't completely happy with just the strokes in there, they felt a little uptight.
Now I could maybe be a little bit more whimsical, more interesting with my strokes.
Oh my gosh, look at that.
I've only been here for, like, two minutes.
I'm just going to knock this back and redo the halftones in the cheekbone right there.
Also just erase the graphite from my fingers so I don't keep smudging this.
I want to connect the halftone in the cheekbones to some of these strokes and the beard.
So it's kind of a continuation of some of these dark shapes.
Right now, I'm going through and making some of the contours just a little bit stronger
and I think that'll just contain the whole thing a little bit better.
Another thing I noticed when I didn't realize how much I exaggerated the ear, I really squished
it and made it really thin and tall, which I don't mind too much.
I mean, that is kind of a product of me just stretching his whole head vertically.
But I didn't realize the extent, like, how much I actually did that.
Okay, I think this is good.
I might potentially make some edits digitally after I put the two drawings together, but
this is good.
I'm happy with it.
So thank you guys for watching.
Make sure to look out for that podcast.
And there's going to be another video of me drawing my self-portrait for this cover.
So stay tuned for that.
All right.
Bye.