After drawing Tauriel, I decided it’d be cool to do a Gandalf drawing. However, I didn’t quite realize the horror of trying to draw his dang beard until I tried to. Needless to say, I ended up having to take several breaks while working on it, and only work on it in spurts of time, to make sure I pushed through it. Honestly, if I’d tried to draw this several years ago, I would have quit before finishing!
It was drawn entirely using graphite pencils.
Purchase link for prints:
https://johndibiaseart.com/drawing-print-of-ian-mckellen-as-gandalf-the-grey-in-the-hobbit-lord-of-the-rings
Purchase link for the original:
https://johndibiaseart.com/original-graphite-pencil-drawing-of-ian-mckellen-as-gandalf-the-gray-in-lord-of-the-rings-not-a-print
With all the white hair, was your approach to draw around each strand (or group of strand)? Or did you do any eraser drawing?
I draw groups and individual hairs within the groups – stuff like that. then use erasers to clean it up. but I don’t just shade an area and erase detail into it usually. Maybe if it’s a background with a highlighted object standing out though