Dancing Solo

I'm doing a graphite drawing called "Dancing Solo". I'm trying a ballet theme and practicing drawing the pointe shoes and later on the ballet stances.

Step 4:
I'm still adding shadows to the legs and feet, balancing out the darks and lights. I hope to finish this soon. I'm not certain how detailed I want to be in my finished drawings. I am really enjoying it though. :)


Step 3:
I am increasing the darks on the left side of the background with a 4B pencil and buffing (rubbing hard) to get a sheen on the paper. I'm also starting to fill in shadows on the feet and will continue with the leg shadows.
Step 2:
I've rubbed the dark area with cotton swabs and then with a folded tissue to smooth out the lines. I then used the cotton swab (dirty with graphite) to start shading in the slippers. I used a small dry paintbrush and scrubbed the dark area again and then used it to pull a little graphite onto the leg area without leaving pencil marks.



Step 1, Dancing Solo: 5 x 10 on matt board.

This is far from finished. I'm just trying to establish the dark areas with layers of 6B graphite pencil that I will rub to make a uniform background.



Pam