Making faces

I've done so little personal art lately, I really want to do more. And because I've written two novels (and about 200k words for unfinished ones) and never actually done any illustrations for them, I'll try and tackle that. First up: Glimpses Of Colour, written 2009-10, a whopping 283k long. Probably some portraits of the main characters before I try actual illustrations.

The nice thing here is that I'm accepting from the get-go that there's no "perfection" to reach, because when it comes to specific facial arrangements my characters keep morphing a bit in my head, so it's just impossible to make them look exactly how I imagine them. There are some vague ideas like, "Bas has a very straight nose" and "Albert has lots of freckles and a slightly up-turned nose" but it's hard to pin them down exactly.

The first attempt is for a portrait of Albert, my second male main character. He's a ghost who reawakens a century after his death in his old house and can't remember anything. Hence begins his relationship with Abraxas/Bas, who lives there now. He's a bookworm and an old book of his, The Complete Novels and Short Stories of Sherlock Holmes, plays an important role. So of course he has to have a book in his portrait :-)

It's a rough sketch. I wrecked the face the first time round, spent two hours practicing faces, and then messed with it again. Ah well. All the rest is roughly slapped on, so... Yeah. His arms don't need bones. It's fun trying to pin down his face though, and a bit weird. I love working in unconventional formats.