This subject has always been very close to my heart, in fact for me it is a very big part of the overall obsession I have for drawing in 2B graphite. It was always going to be a subject that was never going to be done justice to in just one article.
Dodging Black Bananas
In every freehand hyper-realistic drawing I’ve ever done the vast majority of the entire process is really just preparation and groundwork for the successful execution of the very finest of details which is the main thing (apart from proportional accuracy of course) that makes it “hyper-realistic” at all. If you really want to successfully pull off a highly detailed freehand drawing it starts right back at the compositional and reference source choices you make before you even touch the blank piece of paper your finished drawing will be on. I don’t seem to ever want or have time to draw anything but hyper-realism anymore, I suppose partly because it’s the only style that really fascinates me (in graphite anyway, I see pastels as a very different bag of cats), and partly because it takes so long if done properly (i.e. without shortcuts taken through lack of patience or bad choices). You are free of course to draw anything you like from any source at your disposal but if drawing from life (en plein air) you are really not free to take as long as
