Comparing Portraits

 Throughout high school, one of my favorite types of art pieces to create were portraits of my friends. It was mostly because of these projects that I started to really grow and evolve my style into what it resembles today. Other than the overall more realistic look and better presentation, the greatest difference between my older and newer work was that before I had only used a pencil and sketchbook to create my art though now it's mostly all digital.There were many times where I wasn't too sure of how to draw a certain part of the figure so similar to nowadays, I searched YouTube tutorials on how to establish certain skills.

The following are two portraits of the same person, that being my high school friend Toshio. Believe it or not, they were only created about a year apart from each other! After I became more of a digital artist compared to a traditional one, I feel as if I gained a better understanding of color values as well as anatomy (though mostly just for the face). I believe this as throughout my drawing class from the previous semester, whenever I was assigned to draw a human figure not only was I far better at drawing from observation, but also at choosing the right shades of color to highlight (though I only used charcoal). 

I had drawn the picture of Toshio as a paid commission during the summer of 2020. This was because it was difficult to find any other work to do, so I decided to create art as means to make money.