Charlie Chaplin

Here is another late night paint sketch, with my old laptop and wacom intuos 3 tablet. My intuos no longer reads my stylus accurately, all while my laptop makes noise like an old junk car trying to start up. This saddens me because at the end of the day I really love to switch things up from sitting at the desk, and work in a more relaxed setting.... lol bed.

I tried to keep this one quick and loose, while paying extra attention to the face/eyes, and overall body shape. Details are so much fun to add, and it can be easy to get carried away and overwork a painting. If the entire subject/illustration is painted with the same level of detail, the viewer's eye won't know where to go, and the drawing will lack focus!

Once I determine where I want to lead the viewers' eye, that is where I'll spend extra time on the details.  For instance, if I want the main focus to be on the eyes, I won't add equal/more detail and contrast to the ears. That way the eyes will not have to fight for attention. See what results when you play with well defined edges, tighter details, sharp highlights against soft/blurred edges, neutral values and loose strokes. You will find that your eye will be drawn to areas with high value contrast, sharpness, and you'll stay and linger where there are more details to explore. A good thing to remember is that when objects recede into the background, contrast btwn darks and lights decreases due to atmospheric perspective. Features with higher contrast will appear to jump forward, and tend to grab more attention in comparison.

To help myself from getting detail-happy, I try not to zoom in too closely on my canvas right away. By working small, in addition to sticking with a larger brush size, I will be less inclined to paint every stitch in the pants, or each scuff on the shoes...especially before having my composition, main shapes and values worked out.