Master Obi-Wan Kenobi

"Chancellor Palpatine, Sith Lords are our speciality." - Obi-Wan Kenobi


***********

EDIT: March 3rd, caved in to popular demand and reworked the background to make it smoother. The silver part is 6B black, but I lighted it for the photo to make it shine.

*******


Phew, this was a big project! It took over two weeks to complete, and a few of those days were pretty long, but it was (mostly) a fun drawing! I watched Episodes III-VI and listened to John Williams' soundtrack several times while working. I even read the Episode II novel to get in the mood.

Obi-Wan is my favourite character from the series; I love Ewan McGregor's portrayal of the Jedi Knight in the prequels, so when I decided to do some Star Wars art, Kenobi was an easy choice, and I found a good reference pic online.


*******


Medium + Tools:

Strathmore Bristol Smooth 400 series, 14 x 17".

Staedtler Mars graphite pencils, primarily H, 2B and 8B. General's hard-ex.soft Charcoal and Carbon Sketch pencils. Fabel-Castell and Laurentian colored pencils (only two colors used).

Blending stumps, kleenex, kneaded and stick erasers. I like the Tombow Mono eraser. which is like the Tuff Stuff, but has a smaller diameter cartridge, so it can do some pretty fine work.


Notes about the drawing:

I discovered charcoal halfway through. What a magnificent substance: so dark, without glare, and easily blended! A mess to work with, but I think charcoal will prove indespensible in future drawings, because I love the contrast I can achieve with it, and I hate glare. The Staedtler 8B was also extremely useful and doesn't glare.

The black pattern in the background has a metallic shine from a purposely thickly layered 4B that looks cool in person but is tricky to photograph.

Another new technique I tried was circulism, a shading method that I used almost exclusively for the skin. It's the drawing of tiny interlacing circles to produce a realistic, bumpy, irregularly pitted surface. It's time consuming but gives an excellent texture.

Two things I found extremely difficult: the light surrounding the lightsaber blade ( where the color had to mix with graphite...I had no idea how to do it, so I just did it, but it didn't go well), and his mouth, which never truly looked like Ewan's. I considered wrapping a scarf around his face.

*******


I appreciate all comments, critiques, and suggestions (for future art). I'm curious what others think of the one color/B@W combination.

Thanks for looking.