Sketch study (The Girl with Braids)

Since December I have kept an habit to draw a sketch every Week and practice my skills traditionally . So this week's Sketch study is from a reference I found online on Pinterest I think it was a girl from Roma Community with her hair in 3strand braids . She looked both innocent and beautiful so I decided she was the perfect reference to draw.

Firstly I start drawing with basic shapes that I see and the negative spaces too. Tbh every face is just a stacked up pile of 3d shapes like circles triangles rhombus etc but you have to draw them 2d before like I saw the shadow under her chin as a triangle. The braids were all rounded diamond shape sections . Following this method I end up with a rough sketch that I clean up with a Kneadable erasure till it's very light then I used a 2h pencil because 2h pencils have a hard graphite which doesn't smudge much .

Next is the part where I shade all of her features especially the hair ones like her eyes her ,hair, her eyelashes , eyebrows and braids i took a 6B pencil and started hatch each section of hair . 6B is a dark yet soft graphite pencil perfect for shading I also at this point shaded her eyes and eyelashes as well as her eyebrows. I also added some minimal shading to the plates of her face minimal because I want her face to have that more rounder not chiseled look like babies.

I now took a Blending stump and started blending everything to make it more subtle . how ever hair don't need to be blended so much that you don't see the texture so I blended those lightly . Now if you have dark hair you must know how shiny they are if light hits them unlike blonde or light hair. for this I had to added highlights to the hair to make is look more shiny and reflective . I did this by erasing some lines over where I see the hair would curve the most and then I add some smudged lines so the line doesn't look just plant but it looks like it's a reflective light shining over hair .
Next I shaded it all the same way. For this sketch it was more working on contouring of nose and defining hair the skin shading was very minimal .

With that being said here is the final Look .

I really loved how it turned out . I really can see myself improving every week and I like that thing alot . It's a bit tiring to do this with your hands traditionally but I think that just adds more value to them .

well that's it for today. Thank you for your precious time and support ❤️