2. Paulette Goddard as Lady Beryl

Once I drew my first picture, I knew my desire to draw wasn't a fluke and that I was going to continue drawing, so I decided to buy some pencils so I wouldn't be using up my sister's. I went to Michael's, where they had all kinds of fun things to choose from. I might get one of the bigger sets later, but for now I settled on a Prismacolor Scholar pack of 4 pencils (2B, HB, 2H, and Prismacolor Ebony). It was only $2.40, since I had a 40% off coupon! I particularly love the Ebony pencil; it made drawing Lady Beryl's hair a lot of fun.

This character was a murder suspect in one of the first episodes of the 1954 TV series Sherlock Holmes, with Leslie Howard's son Ronald Howard playing Sherlock Holmes. I strongly recommend the show; it is one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes adaptations. This picture comes from when she first appears. (Don't worry, I'm not giving away any spoilers of importance.) Lestrade informs Lord Beryl that his wife has confessed to the murder and that he can go see her now. Lord Beryl opens the door to the drawing room, where Lady Beryl is sitting all dramatically lit, and the camera zooms in on her slowly. When I watched this scene, all I could think was that I wanted to draw her face.

Since this is a black and white show, it was a lot easier to figure out the dark and light areas. The fact that she is wearing dark makeup also made things easier. I probably could have made the shading even darker, but it seemed scarily dark when I was doing it. It's like in my piano lessons where my teacher would tell me to overdo whatever I was supposed to be doing, and what I thought was overdoing it would turn out to be just barely enough—I'm going to have to try to overdo the shading, and then eventually maybe I'll get enough.

The one problem with all her features being so dark was that I fully colored in her eyes (and then thought, "wow! that actually looks like her expression!" because I definitely hadn't captured the expression in my previous drawing)...and then realized the right eye was too far over and had to erase it and move it. Since I had made it so dark, it didn't erase completely. I'm going to have to learn to sketch things in lighter, but I'm already struggling enough to visualize things without that added challenge.

This was also drawn using a 4x4 grid, but I got smart. I figured out that Sharpie would easily show through the paper, which isn't terribly thick. So I drew a grid on a piece of cardstock and slipped it behind the page, and the only thing I drew on the actual drawing page was tiny dots at each corner to keep the grid lined up. Much easier to erase for the finished product!