Day 3: A Universal Monster - Bride of Frankenstein

I just want to start off by saying I hope everyone had a wonderful Independence Day filled with awesome barbecue and fireworks. =)

Todays challenge was to draw a Universal monster through realism, which I felt was kind of odd because not only is realism about making art look realistic, but it's also about portraying real life (who knows, maybe there is an actual bride of Frankenstein??). I chose to draw the bride of Frankenstein because I think she's absolutely gorgeous. This is white Prisma color pencil and white pastel on black illustration board, 16x20.  I wanted to see if I could do it completely in white but I feel I need more practice to be able to do that so I cheated a little by using black and warm grey 70% on her face.  Using white on a black surface was difficult because you're working backwards. Typically, when drawing a face or an object, one would start with the shadows and go from there.  In this style, you have to start from the highlights and work your way to the shadow; you have to draw a map and go from there.  This portrait ate up an entire color pencil that had never been used before so I recommend finding some color sticks for something like this.  It saves on the hassle of constantly sharpening after 3 seconds of use.  At one point I was running super low on white color pencil so I had to improvise with white pastel which changed the look because of the different consistency.  To tone down the major different, I rubbed the pastel with my finger until it spread as far as it could go, then I went back with the dull unsharpened color pencil and went back over it as if I was coloring it.  This got rid of the excess pastel (because it likes to clump) and helped it blend with the surrounding color pencil.  A quick fix, but not very professional looking in the long run.  My advice, use color sticks or have a back up color when working on something of a singular color like this.  This piece doesn't exactly look realistic but I tried my best =P

A famous artist that specializes in realism would be Édouard Manet, a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.