Many people tell me that portraits are difficult.
There must be some magic to getting a likeness……maybe not. The main thing with drawing, all drawing, is to “draw what you see and not what you know”. This is not a new idea, of course. The expression “the more you look the more you see” contains the same essence. When we worry, judge and rush, we become distracted. In fact, when confronted with or distracted by just about any of the details of daily life, we stop truly seeing.
There’s probably a double challenge with portraits, because we have so much deep-seated brain wiring geared to family, faces, recognition and related emotional responses. These responses, innate, profound and mostly unconscious, can easily swamp our portrait-drawing abilities.
A few tips that work for me:
- Turn both the work and reference upside-down – though difficult to do with a live model, I grant you;
- Use your non-drawing hand – this definitely gets you out of your comfort zone;
- Look at your work in a mirror – you see things anew!
- Squint, take your glasses off, turn the lights down, use sunglasses or look through a slightly frosted surface – all of these reduce detail;
- Look at negative shapes – the shape behind the shape!
- Draw corrected shapes before erasing the old – if you must!
- Exaggerate corrections – and then revise.
Some of these are “Old Faithfuls” and I’ve added a couple that have become good habits for me. One is not to erase, at least until new marks are established: those old marks show you where not to draw and sometimes can be recycled for new purposes. A related habit is to exaggerate revisions. The point of both of these processes is that they help me to not become “vested” in what I’ve already drawn, but to continue searching for what might be.
A starter-kit for your drawing toolbox! Do you have any favorites? Let me know!
Break-a-Brush!
David