As some of you may know I am in grad school for school counseling, but cannot stop my urge to do creative things. My brother (the budding photographer) has been reading books on how to grow your creativity, via right brain exercises or free-writing, and has now taken to drawing as a creative outlet.
Returning from work one day, I found numerous chalk sketches scattered on our kitchen tabletop with more sketches on the fridge and on the floor. He was practicing portraits. My brother's only art class in high school was stained-glass. He had a few good drawings, but alas was going about the process of drawing portraits all wrong. So he asked me "How do I draw faces?"
Not having been in an art class for years (nor have I actually drawn a portrait of anything recently), I recalled on elementary facial measurements (you know, the width of one eye is the same width between each eye and the distance between an eye and half is the same from that point and your nose, etc) which seemed to he
lp. But the drawings were still looking very 2D.
So I turned to shadowing and shading. Best way to understand the important parts of drawing a picture is to try and "present" as much of the picture as you can in 30 seconds- using the chalk to shadow the drawing paper first, then remember to use the sides and blunt edges of the chalk to create highlights. As my brother practices these techniques, so did I.
Finally he said, "Just draw me a face so I can see how to do it." And in 15 min. I came up with this:
Not bad for not having practiced any kind of drawing in months (but boy, do I have the hardest time with noses). :)
Thanks for reading.
-Becky
