firefly wash

firefly wash, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

Today's portrait is of Alan Tudyk, who plays Wash, the ship's pilot. (And to those who've seen I Robot, he also did the voice of the robot) He's something of a goofball and it was tricky finding a photo where he wasn't contorting his face somehow. Even here, he's got his upper lip rolled under just a bit. Definitely one of the more elastic faces on the cast. I spent about an hour and a half on this one.

Oh, for those curious, I've included the first step of the drawing, if you were wondering how I go about them.



This is what you'd call a grisaille, an old monochromatic underpainting technique that sorts out the tones of a piece, so that from then on you focus on glazing in the colors. Instead of a grey, I used a dark brown colored pencil. I never use graphite, as I find it gets a little greasy under colored pencil, and has a dulling effect. The brown is warmer.

I don't use the grisaille technique very often, but I find it works really well with these brown bag drawings.

The reference picture is here.