davids head with cloth...

[ion one]

this is the plaster cast of davids head form david and goliath, i did it in about 3 hours using charcoal and white pencils and toned paper, first time using that crap, the cloth was just charcoal so please C&C...
http://www.imgmag.com/images/kinghippo/clothweb.jpghttp://www.imgmag.com/images/kinghippo/davidweb.jpg

[thomasaurus]

WOW. I love the rendering on the cloth, and the stylization of the bust is great

[gauss]

the draped cloth has some nice value and, well, it's a cloth, so mission accomplished there i guess. the david bust, however, looks pretty heavily simplified/stylized for a still-life drawing. the pic reminds me of some figure drawing post from a friend in another forum--very talented guy whose style tended towards cartooning, and though stylish his figure drawings exhibited the same tendencies.
stylizing figure or still-life drawings, however, is completely missing the point. what you need to be focusing on is rendering as closely as possible what you see in front of you. once you've really honed observational drawing skills, stylistic decisions can be made and used in your personal work, but as a study the david head isn't quite there. you've gotten most of the way there, but you've simplified or filled in the blanks yourself instead of really paying attention to the subtleties of the form and the lighting. the face not so much, but the hair appears to definitely have been generalized and largely invented instead of rendered from observation. i did the same thing during one of my first still-life drawing classes and i really wish i hadn't; even when you can draw plenty fine on your own observational drawing skills are really going to boost your personal work once you've gotten the hang of things. so, without rambling on any longer, for your next drawing really try and buckle down on rendering the details of what you see.

[ion one]

thanks for the C&C, ill be sure to try it out...

[Payback]

On the other hand I've heard from other people on this forum to not just draw what's in front of you, but instead think more why it looks the way it looks. Or something...