Beijing Opera

One of the traditional characters, a male lead known as a 'Sheng', from the Beijing Opera. More details are on my other blog here. I started this drawing with the intention of it being looser, more of a sketch, but increasingly the facial expression and the costume seemed to need more care. I finished the face and part of the costume and left it as I wasn't happy with how it was turning out but returned to it and tried to tidy it up a bit and it seemed to work better. I played around with something new for me - leaving out the lines around the trousers and I shaded the background using only the colour to mark the edges. Hard edges don't offend me so I don't worry about them, but I do like the effect on the trousers, especially on the right side. In contrast I tried to make the edges more noticeable against the blank background for the top half of the body. I used a combination of Cretacolor Aquamonoliths (as I still prefer their hardness to others and they have the two colours, English Red and Ochre Light, that I like most and can't replace), Faber Castell Polychromos (pretty good, still not as hard as I like but I want to get away from watercolour pencils) and Albrecht Durer (OK, a bit soft for my liking but good colours). It would be great to have one brand, one set of pencils that have all the qualities and colours I'm looking for, but I haven't found it yet!