Art Class Adventures II
Image by: Andrew Seaman
“Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?
”
Drawing Class #2 - Faces
Faces are fascinating. They are crucial part of our identity and there is no other organ like it that is able to communicate our inner emotion so clearly in a language that is so natural and universal across different cultures. So, it’s no surprise that faces and portraits represent an immense challenge to draw and paint. And I imagine, provide even greater reward when you can get the likeness, personality and emotion just right.
This Thursday night lesson was reserved for learning to draw faces. I struggled. Visibly and audibly. Grunting and sweating for two hours.
All I can say is drawing faces from glossy fashion magazines can be extremely misleading because of too much lighting, makeup, almost no shadows, lens distortion, not to mention loads of photoshopping. Photography is art in itself so my beef might be just with beauty magazines. In any case, even I must admit that drawing from photographs is a great place to start from and learn about basic form, anatomy, shape and lines.
The first demonstration was for us to really capture that universal language and emotion that a face portrays. We drew several ovals divided in two planes and tried to capture an emotion. Then, we followed up on our previous figure lesson and added facial expressions to our stick figures. In the middle of the class, we focused on the planes of the face, proportion, and setting up a good geometrical and anatomical sketch to get us started. We ended the class by trying to draw faces from magazines and trying to recognize and observe those facial planes, geometrical lines and overall anatomy.
I drew three different faces (one with Sergio’s help) but I definitely did not get the likeness of the person I was drawing. Also, there are so many other things to consider like shadows, tones and PROPORTION that I have yet to learn. It was so much fun but I am super motivated and want to learn more. So, my own homework is to go back to anatomy books and to practice more.
There’s going to take many more hours of struggle for me to remember the instructor’s mantra of: Draw loose, draw rough, and draw lightly.
Happy creating! And please, if you have any pointers that helped you get this right - share some words of wisdom below.