The Oehlers Family

[Bob Ebdon]

Just this minute put down pencils and scanned, so there now follows three or four days of correcting mistakes. This is a commission, based on the two photos below. Mum and Dad, taken in 1945 or therabouts, and the five kids taken in 1967. The client is the youngest of the children, now in her late 40's. She decided on the format she wanted.

[Bob Ebdon]

Here's what I have done. Down to 6B pencils, measuring 23cm x 33cm, on a heavyweight smooth cartridge paper. Comments welcomed, remembering I may still have a lot to do.

[Arlene]

hi bob it looks great so far. did the client want the halo effect around the people? to me it looks a bit stark.

[bmac]

Bob, you captured their personalities wonderfully. It looks good but a few spots jumped out at me. I have attached a picture of your drawing with those spots circled, because I'm not sure I could explain very well what I'm seeing.
The mouth on the two ladies on top need some adjustments.
The girl on the left, top looks older than she really is. Maybe soften some of the lines on her face.
The glasses on the boy on the bottom left look uneven.
The chin on both the girl and boy on the bottom right look to big. Maybe adding a little more shading underneath.
It sounds like a lot but they are small little nitpicky things that you may want to look at.
(I hope you can see this, I had trouble attaching it. It wouldn't let me attach it as the size that you posted, for some reason. :confused: )

[Bob Ebdon]

Thanks Arlene and Beth. Arlene, as usual, you are right. The client did ask for this effect, but I have taken a decision to soften and open out the halos a lot. This was not easy as I originally used Wolffs Carbon for these areas, then did not like the effect and erased as much as possible. Any streaks you can see are down to this though, and even using ink erasers has not removed them.

Beth, many thanks. I have looked at all the areas you mentioned and hope they are improved. Probably still more to do, will keep looking.

[beth]

Hi Bob, wow this is quite a project! I like the update better with the white area around their heads. It looks more natural now.

I think there could be something done about the lady's hair. I know in the ref photo it looks very solid and helmet like...but maybe you could improve that for her. Some stray curls and hairs around the edges and some darker curls within. Just a thought.

You're doing well...I'm sure they are going to adore this.

[Arlene]

Hi Bob, wow this is quite a project! I like the update better with the white area around their heads. It looks more natural now.

I think there could be something done about the lady's hair. I know in the ref photo it looks very solid and helmet like...but maybe you could improve that for her. Some stray curls and hairs around the edges and some darker curls within. Just a thought.

You're doing well...I'm sure they are going to adore this.

i was going to comment too on the hair. but not only the lady's (that is the first one that jumps out) but the others too...soften the edges of the hair.

[Denise]

Wow! What an undertaking! You're doing a great job with it, Bob.:clap:

[Bob Ebdon]

Thanks all. The hair has been tricky on all of them - its so weird!! Its like one of those pictures you used to see in barbers, where you could point to the photo on the wall and say "Make mine like that please!" Except I can't imagine anyone wanting to look like any of them. I think there have been tons of Brylcreem and hairspray involved, and I think they would have been most annoyed to have seen a hair out of place. However, I agree, and have loosened some of them up a bit.


I think I am calling this one now, and will telephone the client to come and have a look - she is local, in fact I used to teach with her.

[safaaa]

:) :brevet:

good

[Bob Ebdon]

Not so good. The client has been, criticised and left me to fix.

Oh well - you can't win them all. I'll show the changes when I get them done.

[Arlene]

grrrrrrrrrrrr on the customer...what did she want? i thought it looked good now.

[Bob Ebdon]

No, she was right. I was good on four out of seven. The Dad and the two wearing glasses I was not right on. The boy I am working on - the back of his head was totally hidden so I could not get his hair right. The dad, again it was a problem with the hair, and I could not see details in the photo. The worst was the girl top left, and I think I have vastly improved her now. A lot of it is the client trying to get the people to look like she remembered them - not how the photo shows them. Some of it is down to the size I am working at - too small, the top left girls head measures only 5 1/2 cm from top hair to chin. Some of it is I was not really fully engaged with this commission! I am a bit happier now, but will work some more before scanning again.

[Bob Ebdon]

OK, the main changes were to the three on the left as we look. I would appreciate any glaring errors being pointed out as I have been singularly unable to see them myself! I am a lot happier with them now, but still know some are not quite right.

[Rose]

Bob, I am no artist, and I think you did a wonderful job!!! The one thing that stood out to me that was different from the ref photo was the last girl at the bottom.. her face looks too thin in the pencil drawing and fuller in the photo. That's just a quick observation though. :-)

[Angela]

Bob,
I think you've done a good job. People are the hardest, in my opinion, to render. Especially from an old, not so clear photograph.

Personally, i would have traced each and every one of 'em!

[Sandy]

Hi Bob,

I'm going to try to explain what I'm seeing with the last girl so you can understand; I'm not very good at explaining things...lol

First-the lines of her teeth are slanting a little wrong.

Second you have the line from her left cheek down to her chin curved in way too far, fill it out some.

Third, what you have done on the bottom lip is actually draw in just the shadow between the teeth and the inner edge of the lip, you have missed drawing all of her lip in, to highlight down to the bottom edge of the lip is missing.

I hope you understood that and I bolded it so it's easy for you to go back and read what I said after you make changes, the photo is poor and it's easy to miss, when I do portraits from old photo's I look at them through my 5X mag light and I study them from several different distances.

I did on of my father (see below) this photo was taken in 1935 and it had faded areas.

One more thing....all of these people with exception of mom appears to have brown eyes, and all of yours appear to have blue or light colored eyes.

When I first started drawing I remember that I wanted to draw eyes the way you have done here instead of lights and darks. I would suggest to you...find the highlights and then darken those eyes....don't be afraid.

Now that I've said all of that I wanted to let you know that I think you have GUTS doing so many at once, this is very tuff!!! and I think you're doing a fantastic job.

Sandy:clap: :clap: :clap:

[lucky]

Hi Bob,

What a challenging project!!! I think maybe one thing that's giving you problems is that you've made them very linear, with out much shading. I think when you simplify their features so much it makes it really hard cause everything has to be so completely precise to look right. So maybe gradually building up the values to model their faces more could help. And if there were more darker values building the form, the hair wouldn't stand out so much either.

You probably know this, so ignore me if you do...the best trick is to squint A LOT, so you can see all the values. It will be a lot more work though, so maybe that's why you have done it the way you have. And not sure what the lady who commissioned it is after so I may be totaly off...This is a really tough commission, your doing a great job!

~Lucky

[Bob Ebdon]

Thanks all.

Rose, the client stood over me while I gradually made Jills face thinner and thinner, and approved that jawline, so even tho I agree with you and Sandy that it is thin, I am staying with that.

Angela - I did trace them. Always do with commissions. But I never rely on the tracing, and this is an excellent example of why you never should rely on tracing! For a start, what lines do you trace? On most of these photos there are just general blurs! I start with the tracing as a rough guide as to where things are, but if they get moved around, so be it.

Lucky, yes, I hear Arlene saying "Don't outline!" all the time I am working, and really tried hard not to here. But I haven't managed to get away from it everywhere. Most of my shading has been done with tortillons, not with the pencil. I can see that the tonal range is very lacking especially in the middle, and will try to work the shadows up a bit more.

Sandy thanks - the jawline I have covered, but I will have a good look at the teeth, and thats a good call on the lip, I will try to fix that without making it too much of a fat lip.

THanks to all:clap: :clap: :clap:

[Rose]

Bob, regardless of the work ahead of you, press on! You are doing GREAT... and whatever the client wants, the client gets, right? No matter what it is... so I do understand that there are limitations. It's a great commission and you are doing fine with it. :-)