Inktober 2019 Retrospective | Day 19: Turtleneck

"Again. Again. Once more, darling. You'll do it until you get it right, yes? Once more. Again. Again. Again."

One of my favorite pieces from Inktober 2019. There's something about turtlenecks I just love. Classy and refined, they are.

There's a good dispersal of detail in this piece. It's often good design to have large spaces of low or no detail and concentrated pieces of high detail. This gives the eye a place to rest as well as points of high interest for said eye to check out. I like all the curves of her hair, the feathery lashes, the sketch lines on her cheeks, contrasted with the black void of her turtleneck, the negative space around her, even her apparently mouthless face.

Again, there's far more focus on ink and the gold work than the pencil shading. In fact, there's no light-based shading to speak of, aside from the bit in her ear. I wanted a different look, something vaguely more graphic and flat. The medium tone of her skin, her hair, and the flush of her cheeks/nose are the only shaded bits.

That being said, there is a soft, slight fade in darkness for her hair, going lighter at the top to darker at the bottom. This is entirely for contrast reasons. I wanted her hair to be lighter than her skin but darker than the paper.

The lightness I wanted didn't stand out enough, so making it darker towards the bottom set them further apart. It's not meant to be that noticeable. If you put your finger in the center to separate the top and bottom, it's a bit easier to see.

Her name is something short, elegant, and French. The name 'Gigi' keeps coming to mind. A graceful perfectionist with a gentle voice but a militaristic demand for excellence. She will drive you to the brink until you succeed.

Funny how the image the personality of this picture is about her telling someone to do something again and again and again yet she doesn't have a mouth.

Thanks for reading~

#ink #inktober #woman #turtleneck