Portraiture

In the final weeks of the class, we will be focusing on portraiture.

Portrait drawing, for a beginner, can seem like a difficult task. However, there are tools used by artists that will help you achieve the structure and likeness of any face you are drawing. Although there are similarities in faces and a drawing can begin with a genetic layout, each individual face is different. It is the subtleties and differences that make us individuals. Observing and studying this individuality and translating it to your own drawing will give your portraits not only the likeness, but also character and life. Just like with any other drawing from life, you must pay close attention to the model. Do not draw what you “think” is there, but let the model “tell” you what is there. Here are the questions you should be asking yourself while observing a model: What is the overall shape of the head? How high is it compared to how wide? Is the model looking directly at you (the viewer), or is the head turned away? Where is the vertical line and the horizontal line?

Start all of your drawings with large, loose shapes and then move to the next largest shapes. You have to go from large to small, from general to specific. If you draw an eye, and it is the most accurate eye but doesn’t fit with the rest of the face, then your portrait will be out of proportion.

I am providing a pdf excerpt of pages from a book by Andrew Loomis on how to draw head and hands. One of the most useful tools is understanding the construction of the head. There are different methods, but Loomis’s approach has been, perhaps, the most useful and successful. A lot of artists including animators and illustrators, rely on Loomis’s approach to head construction. The reason for that being is that his approach allows for head invention. If you are an animator or an illustrator this can be very useful in creating characters from your imagination. For the next few weeks, we will be studying this approach and applying it to drawing from observation.