The drawing dutchy

My first ever finished portrait drawing on a3 sized paper.

After I had drawn a few smaller sized drawings and completed them, I decided I needed to buy better paper. The sketchbook I had been using is nice enough but not super good quality paper so the darker darks wont “stick”.

Seeing that I needed new paper anyway, I wanted to buy bigger than a4 sized paper because I wanted to see if I could even do a drawing that size without abandoning it again. So I went for a relatively “cheap” paper, but still good quality, and bought a whole pack. Fabriano St’art, 240 gsm.

I wanted to draw something with a bit of a dark and maybe even gloomy feel. So I spend a lot of time trying to find reference pictures and ended with Ragnar Lothbrok from the tv-series “Vikings”.

For this drawing I needed graphite powder, at least for the background. But that can be kind of pricey. So I went and bought a graphite stick and researched a lot of ways to make that into powder. Then I got a brilliant idea to use a farriers’ file. I talked to a farrier I know, got one of the files he wanted to throw out anyway, and voila, a perfect and relatively fast way to make your own graphite powder.

I spent over two months making this! I didn’t draw every day back then, and constantly tripped over my own insecurity in the process. But I did it! And it did come out pretty good, don’t you think?

It has a lot of graphite shine in the picture, I still need to get this piece professonally scanned one day, but you can get the overall idea.

Let me know what you think in the comments, or tell me about a time where you challenged yourself to do something you did not think you could do!