Game of Thrones Drawing Tutorial

After the tragic conclusion of season three of Game of Thrones, I wanted to try a pencil drawing of Daenerys Targaryen.  Mind you, I haven't done any graphite pencil drawings since college so the thought was somewhat daunting. Fortunately, once I had my sketch down it all came back to me!

I started off by drawing a light sketch. Try not to make your lines too dark, we will use sharp and soft edges to build the shape.

Once the sketch was down, use a darker grade pencil to start enhancing your dark areas.

Starting to look like a face!  Look to your reference photo and notice the really dark areas. If you build the dark areas you will be able to blend out and create the softer/lighter areas. Look at the nose, see how we can start to create shape by blending the darks?

When you are ready to blend, a tortillon tool is best.  It's basically tightly rolled paper that allows you "push"the graphite around to create that blended look.

As you blend, you may find some of your dark areas have lost some of their depth. Don't be afraid to go back in with a darker pencil to continue to build the levels!

Woof, time to start with the hair.  Drawing/painting hair has been an evil nemesis of mine since I first started portraits.  I started with wavy lines and used varying depths of shading to create the flowing appearance.

 I found that is was easier to add the background at this point so I could use it to show the dimension between the head and the background.

When adding the dark pencil for the shirt, I went back in with an eraser to add highlights.  Once you have your highlights, you can enhance them by using a darker pencil around the highlight. Adding a part in the hair made a huge difference!

For the final touch, I went in with my eraser and erased some fine lines to add texture and highlight to the hair, and Viola!
Have fun!

M.