Miniature: Kathryn Grayson

I've been playing around with doing miniature portraits lately. 

I started out using watercolour, and did a couple (I've done one of Merle Oberon as Marguerite in The Scarlet Pimpernel, but that's awaiting a partner in a matching one of Leslie Howard at the moment) and then decided to try my hand at using pencil. 

Watercolour is actually much easier, because the brushes are so much smaller than the 0.5 pacer lead I use when drawing, so it's easier to get really fine, accurate lines. 

This was in fact a double-experiment, because I've never tried doing a pencil drawing on Bristol Board before. 

While I'm practicing, I'm having fun using actors and actresses, and here we have Kathryn Grayson:

This was done on Bristol Board using a 0.5mm mechanical pencil with a #B lead, a very small blending stump, a cotton bud, a touch of a #8B graphite pencil, and white gouache (for the veil), applied with a 6/0 and 3/0 brush. 

Size is 5cm diameter (1.9") 

To give an idea of scale, here's a snap including my reference, my trusty magnifying glass, my pacer, and one of my paintbrushes. 

At the moment, 5cm is about as small as I'm happy going – but hopefully I shall get better and they'll get smaller.