Portraits 2

The second week of portrait drawing from the students.
Some 2D studies from photographs.

And some live portraits.
My personal thanks to their long-suffering partners who sat as models for these studies.

Phil 

By drawing a living person it is so difficult to get the dimensions right.

From a photo you can measure everything and compare with each other.

But again I really enjoyed doing it and this time I could see how the others did their job

and I could improve myself by comparing their drawings with mine.

 Marian

I have really enjoyed the portrait drawing and am delighted that I can now produce convincing people, but the better I become the more frustrated I am at not being able to quite capture a true likeness. Getting the features in the right place on the angled head was incredibly difficult - I eventually had to erase the border to trick my brain out of trying to make his features symmetrical with it rather than his head.

Peter was a pleasure to draw as he has such good strong features - but oh dear, will he ever forgive me for the results.

 Judy

I'm finding drawing people from life a lot more difficult due to the big difference a slight shift in position makes and the changing light. I'm still really drawing people. I'm not quite able to make the drawings look exactly like the person but part of the fascination for me is seeing that tiny changes in angle, length or weight of line and shading can make such a huge difference and I think I end up falling in love a little bit with whoever I'm drawing.

Proportion

 Gallery 6 - Portraits
 Left late into this course, I am addressing basic sighting for proportion and perspective over two lessons.












I have used portraits as a model for how to sight and draw proportions and the basics of tones and shading. Full face this week.


 The aim of these exercise is not to produce an accurate likeness of the models but to reproduce as closely as possible the basic proportions of a human face so that the face looks enough like a real person.

 

 Tricky to say the least and most of the students complained that they feared this would be the hardest of all tasks set.

They found it challenging but their follow-up  work is showing just how well they have consolidated their lesson to produce these images from photographs and life.
 



It is interesting to see how each student has interpreted the same model and hopefully will help them analyse how their own observation differs from others and will help them critically review their own work.

For that reason I have grouped them according to model. Self portraits come last and are not identified so that the students can try to guess who is who!

Three of them are missing this week for various reasons

Comments from the Students

'I have found this weeks exercises VERY difficult and I came very close to giving up.!!!

I have not enjoyed or looked forward to doing them at all. Each one took at least 2 to 3 hours and I kept coming back to them over the course of a day 

The drawings look OK but not a likeness of who they should be.

I know I will not be drawing portraits in the future that's for sure.

I am sorry this is so negative but that's how I feel about my drawing this week.

 

'I had thought I would not enjoy portraiture - far too difficult - but armed with a lesson on proportions, and with the help of a bit of shading, it was fascinating to watch a face come to life under the tip of my pencil.  

 Heady stuff.  I found men's faces the most difficult, but much more interesting to draw'

'I really loved doing these. They don't quite look like who they are meant to be but I am amazed at the improvement having been taught about the proportions of a face by Sylvia. I think I might have changed my mind about being interested in doing portrait drawings.

Self Portraits of the Artists

For me these drawings are my favourites, they are full of character and energy showing me just how much the artists have seen. Although they would all say that the likeness is really not them there are elements of each one which are true!

It is obvious that they have been done from life and not from photographs...well done all of you - (Sylv)

'I try to avoid looking in mirrors so the self portrait was a bit of an ordeal for me, but what was more disconcerting was to see my mother appearing on the paper - that can't be right surely!'