I never want to look in the mirror again! I spent almost two hours staring at my face and trying to draw my self-portrait...again...in order to show my progress. Admittedly, I skipped the chapter on light and shadow, which apparently is crucial to drawing a nuanced likeness of yourself. But I really wanted to finish my creative skill blog with a self-portrait since that is how I began it.
If I have learned anything through this process, it is that you CANNOT skip steps. Developing a skill is a process. All components of the process rely on the other. Sure I was able to produce a slightly better likeness of myself, but I do not think it is representative of the progress that I have made as a person who draws.
To be honest, I thought that it was turning out great. The eyes were awesome and really captured the sadness in my eyes -- not that I am a sad person, I just have sad eyes. The nose was not too bad, but the mouth kind of threw things off. I had my head tilted at an angle in the mirror, and I do not think that I was returning to the right angle because my lips are off. Then the hair. I hate drawing hair. I have not made the leap from actual to representation with hair. I can right brain everything except hair. BOOOOOO.....
I think I might try this again soon. I just get so impatient. Plus, this has been hard to endeavor on my own. I really miss the instruction part of learning. I enjoy being taught and having a teacher to give feedback, so the learning on my own part, I think, exacerbated my impatience.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Portrait of Proportion redux
So the second part of the lesson on proportion was to draw a portrait in profile using a live subject. I was a bit skeptical of my ability to pull this off. I know that I have gone out on own my own to test my progress, but that was different because I was deliberately off task, so failure was not only ok, it was expected. So far, I feel like I have been relatively successful at all of the assignments set forth by the book. This one was the first one that I thought I might not be ready for.
I selected my boyfriend as a subject. I figured that it would not be so hard to get him to sit still in profile on TV night. The result was not that bad. He feels like it is a true likeness; I do not. If I had never seen him and then saw the drawing, I might think that the drawing was really good. However, I don't think that it is a true likeness, so from that perspective, I am not truly happy with it. But the fact that it looks like a real human in proportion is a success that is not lost on me.
Without further ado...Dan in profile:
I selected my boyfriend as a subject. I figured that it would not be so hard to get him to sit still in profile on TV night. The result was not that bad. He feels like it is a true likeness; I do not. If I had never seen him and then saw the drawing, I might think that the drawing was really good. However, I don't think that it is a true likeness, so from that perspective, I am not truly happy with it. But the fact that it looks like a real human in proportion is a success that is not lost on me.
Without further ado...Dan in profile:
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Porttrait of Proportion
So now that I have "mastered" perspective, it is time to move on to proportion. My book uses portraiture for this lesson for two reasons: 1) they are perceived as more difficult, so doing one successfully builds confidence and 2) they effectively demonstrate how proportion can be easily misconstrued by a brain that sometimes overcompensates.
The second factor is actually a really interesting phenomenon. Apparently, because the top of the head is less interesting than the eyes, we see the eyes in a more prominent spot on the face. When beginning drawers draw a face, they mistakenly place the eyes 1/3 of the way down from the top of the head, even though the eyes are actually located half way. The result is what the author calls "cut off skull." One way to see proof of this overcompensation of how the brain "sees" proportion is to look in the mirror. Your head LOOKS the size that it is in actual space. However, if you take a marker and outline the image on the mirror and then measure it, the image of your head ON the mirror will be way smaller than the head you see IN the mirror.
To introductory lesson in portraiture is to copy (not trace) a portrait done by the master artist John Singer Sargent. The author believes that beginners can learn a lot by trying to draw like a master. She was right. On first glance, the portrait seems simple. I thought that it would be super easy to copy. However, the complexities are so subtle that you do not realize their genius until you get into it. Some of the lines are softer and broken while others are hard and solid. The lines are also very fluid, and the curvature so slight that it is easy to either make the curve too round or too straight, which really distorts the image. The author allows you to choose whether you copy the image right side up or upside down. I chose right side up because I thought it looked easy. Wrong.
I started and balled up my paper three times -- even though I was using my pane and grid as a guide. This is where I learned all of the great lessons about lines and subtle complexity, but it was nearly impossible to successfully recreate this portrait even remotely close to the original artist's work. So I started over one last time, but this time I recreated the image upside down. It did not turn out so great compared to the other image. However, if I had never seen the other image, and only seen mine, I would not have thought that mine was half bad.
Here is the original:
My girl's forehead is a little weird, but I kinda like it:
The second factor is actually a really interesting phenomenon. Apparently, because the top of the head is less interesting than the eyes, we see the eyes in a more prominent spot on the face. When beginning drawers draw a face, they mistakenly place the eyes 1/3 of the way down from the top of the head, even though the eyes are actually located half way. The result is what the author calls "cut off skull." One way to see proof of this overcompensation of how the brain "sees" proportion is to look in the mirror. Your head LOOKS the size that it is in actual space. However, if you take a marker and outline the image on the mirror and then measure it, the image of your head ON the mirror will be way smaller than the head you see IN the mirror.
To introductory lesson in portraiture is to copy (not trace) a portrait done by the master artist John Singer Sargent. The author believes that beginners can learn a lot by trying to draw like a master. She was right. On first glance, the portrait seems simple. I thought that it would be super easy to copy. However, the complexities are so subtle that you do not realize their genius until you get into it. Some of the lines are softer and broken while others are hard and solid. The lines are also very fluid, and the curvature so slight that it is easy to either make the curve too round or too straight, which really distorts the image. The author allows you to choose whether you copy the image right side up or upside down. I chose right side up because I thought it looked easy. Wrong.
I started and balled up my paper three times -- even though I was using my pane and grid as a guide. This is where I learned all of the great lessons about lines and subtle complexity, but it was nearly impossible to successfully recreate this portrait even remotely close to the original artist's work. So I started over one last time, but this time I recreated the image upside down. It did not turn out so great compared to the other image. However, if I had never seen the other image, and only seen mine, I would not have thought that mine was half bad.
Here is the original:
My girl's forehead is a little weird, but I kinda like it:
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