Illustration - Working Methods, Week 4: Expressions

This week our task was to create expressions, using faces, hands or objects.  We were to do three entirely different pieces. The first one, the woman with her arms outstretched, came rather quickly to me. The next one was a challenge; I was attempting to emote 'tears of joy,' but the tears just aren't there, and instead the image looks a bit flat to me. The last one, the woman with the wine, I did extremely quickly in ink and wash, and only took 20 minutes (in comparison to the woman with arms outstretched, which took nearly 3 hours).

Woman with arms outstretched was done in pencil crayons, joyful 'tears' was done in soft pastels, and woman with wine was done in ink & wash, all on A3 paper.

I'll let the pieces speak for themselves. I got a lot of great constructive criticism from my instructor, which I will definitely be using in my future work. Overall, I'm not happy with the pictures, but I'm ecstatic that I'm learning so much, and I'm really enjoying the process. It's about the journey, right?

Next week we are to take expressions one step further and create a 'scene or event' with an emotion. I was in London over the weekend celebrating a friends birthday, so I'm thinking of drawing on that event for inspiration.