How Lili Reinhart got me doing Graphite Portraits

Most of you know her as Betty Cooper from the popular CW series Riverdale: Lili Reinhart. The actress who asked me - and about 30 million others - to do a renaissance inspired portrait of Adeline - her more than adorable goddaughter. I never used to be any good at drawing people, but quarantine had just started and when I saw that super cute photo I thought: "What do I have to lose?!" I mean just look at her:

I picked up my pencils and graphite crayons and started drawing. How ever it was going to turn out I decided I was just going to go with it. Portraying in that much detail and so lifelike was not something I was used to. So, after about 8 hours of working on that drawing it still looked like this:

Never give up.

It was already 1am but I was nowhere near giving up. Having spent that much time on that piece already kept me encouraged to keep at it. I mean I did definitely not want that time and effort going to waste - not at any cost. I made myself a cup of coffee and was ready to work through the night.

After hours and hours of drawing, erasing, retracing, shading, and smudging I was finally done and sooo proud of myself. Me usually being a very impatient person, who always needs everything done and completed in preferably the next few minutes, made it all the more impressive that I found the inspiration and patience to sit through 25 hours of drawing.

And it was so worth it!

People´s support and encouragement

I just had to have Lili see it. So, I posted it to my Instagram and asked followers to tag her account. Soon it wasn´t only my followers that engaged on that post and it´s comments. My account was overflowing with positive, encouraging feedback and nice messages. People I didn´t know even started reposting my post.

And after a couple hours Lili saw it and apparently thought I did a good job:

This made me feel so confident about my art and inspired me to draw more. I wanted to improve my techniques and keep impressing myself and I did. A friend who saw my post asked me to draw him and sent me this picture as a reference:

Why this mirror selfie is so important to me.

Happy to have a new project during Covid-19 lockdown I started drawing again. I was determent to make this my best piece yet and to put all the effort in it that I possibly could. After 10 hours this was my preliminary result:

After sending this to another friend who knew Oliver it was clear that anyone could easily identify who that was. I was more than happy with what I had achieved, but I still wanted to finish the entire picture, and this are my results:

You know how pictures you take, paintings/drawings you do, stories you write dissatisfy you more every time you look at them until you have basically "starred it ugly"? I looked and looked and couldn´t find anything I didn´t like. To this day this drawing is still my favorite of all those I have ever done, because this is the first time I remember being completely and utterly happy with a piece of art I made :).

The timeless pleasure of drawing

Working in this much detail is considerably time-consuming. The portrait I did of Oliver took me 28h of purely drawing. So, people kept asking me why I do it and how I sit through it. The answer to that question is quite simple: I cannot imagine anything more mysterious, more challenging, character-building, meditative and enriching. I chose to use those adjectives in that order for a reason:

Mysterious

Why mysterious? You start drawing. You don´t know whether it´ll turn out great or you´ll be ripping that piece of paper in half seconds from now. You can barely recognize what those few faint lines are supposed to be. You are still in charge of forming it, of leading it in a certain direction without knowing the destination yet. Still those thin lines start taking shape and hinting at what they could become.

Challenging and character-building

As soon as you have reached the point where the spectator knows for sure what that drawing shows, you will have spent a lot of time on that piece already. You may have forced yourself to keep going for a while now. You start to get tired and begin to debate whether the portrait is able to work as a complete piece with what you´ve got so far. You now have to decide if you chose to give up or to keep going, to complete.

Meditative and enriching

You are now done you have pushed through, despite and in spite of all the difficulties during the process, your doubts and tiredness. The piece turned out good or even amazing. You feel like you can do anything. You feel satisfied. When people around you start complementing your work you can´t help but feel content and proud of yourself.

Why I would want to work with Memberful.

By asking her followers to draw her goddaughter, Lili inspired me. Not only to do that, but to do more arts, to challenge myself. She gave me a passion, something I greatly love doing. That is exactly what I feel everyone deserves to have in their lives and it is exactly what I want to give to someone. I´d like to start my own blog about anything and everything arts & crafts, where people can either just brows or sign up to recieve weekly inspirations in form of e.g. an email, because the one thing greater than being inspired, is to see how others are inspired by you.

If you´d like me to write more about arts and crafts and what inspires me, feel free to let me know by liking this post. Tips are highly appreciated and will be fully invested in my art. Thank you so much for reading and I am looking forward to reading about your passions and stories and being inspired by you :).