PORTRAIT DRAWING
For this workshop, we focused on practicing how to draw portraits. Even for talented well practiced artists, faces are still one of the most challenging pieces of work to do. For a beginner like me, this assignment was extremely intimidating. But our teacher broke down the assignment and structured it to ft our skill level. If we felt completely uncomfortable with drawing, they were able to print a picture of who they wanted to draw, draw a grid over it, and then recreate the portrait on another paper one square at a time. For more intermediate drawers or individuals who wanted to challenge themself, were able to select a portrait picture, slice it in half, and then draw the other half of it. And of course those who felt more advanced got to completely free hand sketch the portrait. I chose to do the intermediate option, because I'm not a good drawer and I had done the project before and wanted to see if I would improve.
This time I chose to recreate a picture of my best friend Chloe, because the image had lots of contrast and distinct shading, as well as it was a completely straight on photo. I was taught by my teacher that the most common mistake when drawing faces is that they are outlined instead of shaded. That faces never have a section that is pure white, it is always lightly shaded. So I worked patiently at trying this new technique. And while I know many of the advanced drawers finished theirs in two hours, I had to remain patient. It took me many class periods and hours outside of school to get it to level that was satisfactory to me. In the end I was extremely shocked and pleased with my results. It taught me that I am able to still create a decent piece of art, it just takes lots of time and patience.
This time I chose to recreate a picture of my best friend Chloe, because the image had lots of contrast and distinct shading, as well as it was a completely straight on photo. I was taught by my teacher that the most common mistake when drawing faces is that they are outlined instead of shaded. That faces never have a section that is pure white, it is always lightly shaded. So I worked patiently at trying this new technique. And while I know many of the advanced drawers finished theirs in two hours, I had to remain patient. It took me many class periods and hours outside of school to get it to level that was satisfactory to me. In the end I was extremely shocked and pleased with my results. It taught me that I am able to still create a decent piece of art, it just takes lots of time and patience.