Method On the Portrait

The Method is a three stage way of developing a drawing. The first layer is the drawing of light, or skeleton of the drawing. Second is the transparent wash, in this case, watercolor. Then finishing with a soft, bold graphite.
Stuart Loughridge demonstrates how to go about the method, starting out with an F graphite pencil. Sketching with light lines he gestures in the portrait, keeping the dither and being open to investigation. After finding the light source he can start to find some shadow edges to sculpt the form a little bit.

Now he can lightly wash in the ivory black watercolor, keeping in mind the light effect. He’s not looking for a high contrast level, so he keeps the wash light overall and a slightly darker tone for accents.

Now that the wash is dry he can erase any pencil lines that he doesn’t want. Afterward he goes back in with his F pencil to find some more drawing and line work. Now you can go in with more watercolor, or grab a soft pencil and accent areas and find a focal point. He prefers to use the pencil as the accent because if he doesn’t like it he can easily erase it out. He can change the decisions he made previously with the graphite which adds more dither.
So in review, after the light drawing and initial tone, he sets a secondary glaze to build up the values, then turning form lightly with the F lead before finishing with the soft lead to accent the darks and establish the expression.

It can be a very fast process with a light wash because it will dry very quickly so you can go in with the lead to accent while being open to changing things. The layers start to superimpose on each other to create an interesting picture for the viewer.