Graphite pencil portrait ofthe film actress, Mary Pickford, on A4 Daler Rowney Airbrush Bristol board.

Pencils: Mars Lumograph (2H, B, 2B, 4B), Faber Castell 9000 (6B and 8B), Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 10B, mechanical pencils 0.2 mm/2B, 0.3 mm/2B, 0.5 mm/4B with Ain Stein leads. 9B Faber Castell Pitt Graphite used to prepare graphite powder applied with a small make-up brush.

Indentation: Royal Langnickel embossing tools.

Blending: Blending stump by Boldmere and paper tissues.

Erasing: W H Smith kneadable eraser, Tombow Mono Zero Ultra-fine eraser., Jakar battery eraser.

Photography of drawing: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS10 compact camera, tripod and easel. A dark cloth was used behind the camera to eliminate reflection from the graphite shine.

Photo adjustment of the photo of the drawing so that it closely resembles the drawing itself using GIMP: Removal of barrel distortion; Cropping to A4 ratio and removal of perspective distortion; Cropping unfinished edges of drawing; Adjustment of histogram.

My reference for this drawing is a Public Domain photograph on Wikimedia of the film actress Mary Pickford created about 1910 by Rufus Moody. Here is a link to the reference: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia…

I decided to attempt a drawing from this photo because of the challenge of drawing such a high-contrast image incorporating lots of hair detail, both in and out of focus.


Should I be lucky enough to obtain many favourites on this drawing in the first few days after posting it, I regret that I may not be able to thank personally for each of them, so please accept this general thanks instead. I will always, however, reply to comments.


Here are my other drawings from the world of film and TV:

https://www.deviantart.com/latestarter63/art/Pencil-portrait-of-Mary-Pickford-847451786