Pyrography Portrait - My Boys No. 2

 Wow, so I left a rather long gab between posts!  Better late than never, though, right?!  Well here we go:

After I had shaded in the faces in their basic elements, I started on the hair for both of them, as well as the edges of our older one's face as it receded into the hoodie.  Creating the illusion of depth and contour is key to the image - I'm still certainly learning about this as I go.  If you want to add depth and contour in your shading, start learning the art of sketching portraits.  I am doing this on the side in the back ground and learning to free hand my drawings, and it is really helping me to understand many basic principles for contour, depth and roundness.

 Here is an overall shot showing the progress so far.  I do jump around a bit as I go, as this gives me better perspective.  As I notice areas that need more shading or need more definition, I move to those spots and therefore hop across the overall image a fair bit, but I like working this way, as I think it brings a unity to the finished piece.

 Our youngest son has very large eyes!  He's always been so expressive with them, too, they almost talk for him much of the time!  I really wanted to capture this in the image, along with his crazy going-everywhere sort of hair  =)  Our oldest, in contrast has very relaxed eyes and a quiet smile sometimes, which again, is a beautiful part of his nature that I wanted to reflect.  It was fun thinking about the differences in the two of them, as I worked on this portrait.

So here you see the next overall image showing hair mostly done (no part or section is totally done at this point, of course), and next it is on to the clothing...

Check back soon, I'll even mark it in my day timer so I actually make my next post within a week or so - yup, I think I need the help.

Side note, I'm working currently on my Mother-in-law's Dad's enlistment photo right now.  It shows him at 18yyears of age in his aviation suit coat and hat.  When I'm done, I'll ask her if I can post it for you all to see  =)

By the way, If your seeing this and would like me to do a wood burned portrait for you of someone you know or of an old photograph of someone in your family, just contact me via my Etsy shop (you'll see the shop on the right side of your screen near the top of this page) and we'll go from there...

Happy Spring to you all  =)

Cheryl