Yoda

Having already completed a Stormtrooper helmet, I wanted to attempt another character from Star Wars. As my husband is a huge fan, I decided to let him choose who and what I would draw next, and he chose Yoda. We looked at a couple of images and he went with one where Yoda was looking up; in a thinking pose. In order for me to draw the correct proportions, I drew a grid in my sketchbook and sketched a rough outline:

My intention was to have an outline on paper before beginning the shading; I knew I would probably alter parts of the drawing as I went along. For shading, I used a standard 2H pencil and a 0.5mm mechanical pencil as well as using paper stumps for blending. I began shading the ears first before moving on to the head:

At this stage, I was reasonably pleased with the progress, but felt that maybe the mouth could be altered slightly as well as the left-hand side of the face. I decided to continue with the remainder of the picture, and then have another look at the areas that I wasn’t happy with. This is the finished picture:

Initially, I wasn’t overly happy with the finished sketch; I was disappointed and felt that I could have completed it better. At the time, I wasn’t sure that the completed sketch actually looked like Yoda, because I couldn’t see it. Maybe it was because I had spent so much time trying to correct the drawing, and getting frustrated that I just couldn’t see it in the right way. I had finished the drawing late on the 30th July, and even though I wasn’t overly happy, I shared it to my social media accounts. I decided right at the beginning of returning to drawing that no matter what the finished drawing looked like, I would share my drawings with people. Having had a good night’s sleep and looking at the drawing again, I am a lot happier with it.

In future, if it’s getting too late in the evening to draw, or I’m finding it difficult to get part of the drawing correct, then I would benefit from putting the drawing down and coming back to it another time. I would definitely draw another picture of Yoda as the character has an interesting profile and is excellent for shading.