Hello people, hope you're doing great. Today I'd like to share a very realistic portrait I made of a woman for her 60th birthday.

They (her family) wanted to make something special to mark her sixtieth birthday, something to always remember and that'll last a lifetime. There's not many options better than art honestly.

I went all in on this portrait for five straight long hour days to make it as perfect as possible. Photorealism is challenging on its own, but hyper-realism takes it up a notch as your goal is to make the art look like an high definition photograph. It takes a lot of patience, sacrifice and practice.

This portrait also contains an item which has become one of my most favourite items to draw, the African head tie. I love how they contain different layers, contours and patterns, it's a lot of fun trying to render all that on paper.

(Something I don't understand went wrong with this image ☹️)

I shaded most of the face with graphite going from box to box in the grid layout, so I could concentrate on getting all the details right in each square. However, the darkest areas like the brows, eyes and nostrils were done with charcoal.

At this point, I struggled with whether to include a background or not, to strike a contrast with her white top, you can see what I decided from the first image.

Summary

Status: commissioned
Size: 20x16 inches
Duration: Five days
Medium: graphite and charcoal on paper

Thanks for stopping by, please share your thoughts and hit that like button before you leave 😉

PEACE✌🏽