No. 309: Sunny Faces

"Sunny Faces" No. 309, pencil, November 2015

Here's one from November 2015 that I plum forgot to post.  I had been asked to hold up until it was delivered for a Christmas present and, with other Christmas orders and holiday hub-bub, it got set aside.
It is, however, still a good study in putting sunshine to paper.
We'll take this one from start to finish.

These siblings were hanging onto a rope swing in front of a big tree.  It was a bright day and both were squinting from the sun. That made shading tricky because part of their faces was dark, and the rest supersaturated with light.

Complicating matters is the girl being a blond, whose hair washed out in the sunlight. A lot of detail had to be left to guesswork.

The sunshine not only illuminated those cute faces, it also cast shadows into the folds of their fall clothing -- those heavy hoodies.

The clothing got finished first. Here you can see the sunlight on the fabric and the shadows in the folds.

The girl's hair partially covered one eye so I tried to imagine how the eye would look "uncovered." I lightened up their faces; the original photo -- which you can barely see, below, had much more shadow.

Last to be done were the hands on the rope. Hands are hard but hands and shadows are really tough. The tree was left out by request (whew).

The end result captured the sun in the hair and on the faces, and brought out details in the folds of the fabric.  A simple brown wood frame was requested, and No. 309 was finished!