Martin Luther King Jr. value

Oh hey, look; traditional art!

This is part of a project that I'm doing for my Illustration Techniques class. This is the first part: our teacher wanted us to choose a portrait of very important person that could be seen as one's role model, whether in a political or a career sense, or could just be someone historically memorable, and redraw from the reference on tracing paper. I chose good ol' Martin Luther King Jr.


That classroom's scanner loves to show off the strokes... they really are supposed to look more blended in than that. :c I could've done more, but lots of people seemed fond of this anyway; I was one of the... seven? class mates that actually worked in a decent/acceptable amount of value, while many others didn't explore the value scale well enough. Some even admitted to flat out not wanting to do dark tones in fear of messing up the portrait or ripping the paper... I can understand that, but really, at least TRY to use some darkness. D:.

The method I used was hatching a mid-tone across the portrait's form to set as my base tone, and then I darkened, lightened and smoothed/blended where I saw fit. That's called rendering, apparently.

Soooo... yeah, I guess that's all to say about this. Hope you guys don't mind me sharing some college work.

Reference used. (warning; it's huge)