Art 1. Joker.

This is my development of my Joker sketch to the finished piece.

For inspiration on this piece I looked at the promotional photographs as well as the film "The Dark Knight" to get an idea for my Joker drawing.

As you can see from the first image, I used sketching pencils to first draw a circle which would be the head of the character. I then sketched a central line to position the eyes, nose and mouth in the right positions. I then roughly drew the eyes and the skin creases joining the eyebrow placement and the top of the nose. I then moved from the outer corners of both eyes and moved down in a diagonal line until both lines met with the central line. I then referred back to the images and drew out the nose. Followed by the placement of the lips. I then focused on where the hair would be flowing alongside the face and how the hairline would reach up to on the top of his head.  I then decided to place more details such as the creases on the forehead with would be highlighted from the face paint the character is wearing, along with the extension of the smile which is classic of the Joker character.                                                                                                          

Once I had roughly drawn all the positions of the characters features, I then used different pencils to bring out the details of the eyes, to show more depth within the character stare. the shading around the eyes needed to be darker than the other parts of detail with the pencils as I needed to show the darkness of the black face paint which was used around the Joker's eyes in the film. The hair was the next area i focuses on to give detail to as I needed to display the different directions the hair was flowing. 

When I finished sketching the Joker and placing detail with my normal graphite sketching pencils, I decided to colour the piece in. I used standard colouring pencils to add skin tone in areas of the face in which the face paint the character was wearing had been wiped or faded from perspiration or fighting. I then used red for the lips and showed the darker tone on areas of the lips to help the shading of them. I then decided to add colour to his clothes, the classic green and people suit from the comics and the jail scene from the film came to mind.

To finish the drawing, I used fine liners to add detail to the shaded areas to give more depth to the piece and details to specific areas such as the underlining of his lips, eyes and shirt.