Drawing the Shawshank Redemption Movie Poster

I really liked the Shawshank Redemption movie. A story of a really honest man who finds himself exploited by a faulty legal and prison system only to arrive at the other end victorious. One of my all time favorite movies!

I liked the movie poster showing Andy (Tim Robbins) and Red (Morgan Freeman) beside each other so I wanted to try to draw it. This is the process I took, the mistakes I made, the changes I felt were necessary and the final drawing. I still felt like there were problems with the drawing – especially in Andy’s character, but decided to go ahead and consider it completed. Please follow along with the process by viewing the photos below.

The start – creating the grids.

First I create a 1″ x 1″ grid on the photo and the paper I will draw on? Why do I do this? I feel like one of my biggest challenges is being able to replicate the image on my drawing paper without some grid reference. Some folks will consider this cheating – I can’t help that. But, I’m more focuses on the use of light and shading to reproduce a more life-like representation of the photo. During the process, I like to take photos of my progress. I do this so I can post my progress on my social media channels and because when I look at the smaller image on my phone, it’s easier for me to see the flaws I’ve created in my drawing against the original image.

I don’t have a place where I always start, so I start where I think it’ll be easy to start.

The Start – another view

I found that while drawing Andy’s character I had many problems along way so I spent quite some time erasing and redrawing areas. Can you see this progression in these photos?

Continuing – drawing Andy

Continuing – drawing Andy

Continuing – drawing Andy

Continuing – drawing Andy

Starting Red

More of shading Red

I also found that the nose of Red’s character was wrong so erased and redrew that until I was satisfied.

Red’s nose was wrong – too high on his right side

Nearly done

Here’s the finished product (yet to be framed). I still see flaws, but I like the way I was able to portray the lighting and shading that represents the human face and head.

Finished drawing