Family Portrait, Thanksgiving Scene (This One Needs Work)
This one seemed simple enough, since I’ve been doing so many family sketches. I set out to draw a scene from a Thanksgiving dinner out with my mom, sister, brother-in-law, wife, and our two little ones. Unfortunately, not all art is destined to actually work…and this one I think falls into that category of “not this time, Jon.”
Here’s what I have at this point:
I started confidently enough, drawing very rough basic outlines from what I viewed as prominent shadows or similar color. It was still going fine as I went from left to right, filling in detail on my wife, oldest daughter (a bit more difficult this time), and myself. Once I got to my mom though, it started unraveling. I realized it didn’t look much like her, so I moved on…then I realized the next figure didn’t look too much like my sister. So I jumped to my brother-in-law, and totally botched him.
I think I managed to slightly salvage my sister and my mom to some extent. I mean, they look like decent sketches of people, but how much do they look like my actual mom and sister? Only somewhat of a resemblance, I think. My brother-in-law is closer than he was at first, but I still don’t think you could really guess who it is without prompting.
I’m not sure if I should just take this as a loss and move on, or if it’s worth spending more time refining. I’ll have to think on it! Sometimes there’s only so much erasing you can do before the paper starts to betray you and everything looks like gray smudges.
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You’re being way too hard on yourself. This is amazing!
You’re too kind, thanks for that!
Wow, liking the lines. Full of life 🙂
Much appreciated Waseem!
This sketch conveys the simplicity of the humans happiness – to have a big family 🙂 . I really like it
Well said!
I think that happiness was on display for everyone…except our youngest kiddo! She was too busy trying to figure out how to get free
Still reads as a great sketch – you’ve got the expressions and body language!
Thanks! I should count my blessings – at least they do look like people. Not the people they’re supposed to look like, but still – small victories
Looking good. Group portraits are tough. Achieving a decent likeness is hard enough and here you have to do it 7 times!
That’s true, seven chances to mess up!
Imagine trying to sketch something with an actual crowd of people…I think it would take me like 10 years to do