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CREATING A PORTRAIT WITH SPIRIT
There is a difference between head drawing and portrait drawing. Head drawing focuses on shapes, plane changes, anatomy, form, and perspective. Portrait drawing is an artistic representation of a person’s spirit—their expression, likeness, personality, and mood.
PORTRAIT DRAWING MATERIALS
I use vine and willow charcoal sticks for my portrait drawings to achieve the chiaroscuro technique. Chiaroscuro, an Italian term meaning light (chiaro) and dark (oscuro), is used to enhance the dimensionality of drawings by creating smooth, subtle transitions among values.
ESSENTIAL CONCEPTS & TECHNIQUES
The possibilities for using drawing materials are limitless, but there are some traditional methods of application you should know.
POSES & FEATURES
Artists use a standard set of measurements to create accurate proportions when constructing a head drawing. The following serve as general guidelines. All faces are different, and individuals have varying proportions. Use these guidelines as a starting point, but stay true to the actual proportions of your subject.
ENHANCING DEPTH & DIMENSION
It’s best to use a single light source to light the head for portraiture. The position of the light source should ideally be above and slightly to the front left or right of your model. This lighting setup, called “three quarter lighting,” produced light and shadow not only from top to bottom, but also from side to side on the model’s head, a crucial factor in creating the illusion three-dimensionality.
BRINGING LIFE INTO PORTRAITS
The position of the head and the neck establishes the attitude of the portrait and hints at the emotion of the sitter. Besides the angle of the head, look for stretch and compression in the neck that reinforces the gesture.
DRAWING CHILDREN
Children have distinctive characters and personalities. They register as many feelings and emotions as adults, but much more freely and obviously. As we age, we learn to hide our real emotions, sometimes too deeply. Most children are much more truly themselves than adults are.
DRAWING ELDERLY PEOPLE
The faces of elderly people give the artist more to study and capture in the way of forms and lines. Wrinkling is a normal part of aging, but you can achieve the impression of age with minimal rendering of wrinkles by working the main lines and forms of the emaciating muscles and the creases between them. The cheekbones, the corners of the jaw, and the bone of the chin all become more evident in the aging process.
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