APPROACHES TO PORTRAIT

There are many ways to work on a portrait, so why not to try them all. You will love it. Keep reading! Below, I explain the sequence of units we will address during the year. We will do it following the rhythm of your way of learning. Maybe some topics will require just one class, and others a bit longer. It depends on the group.

Automatic and blind drawing by tracing "the spaghetti-line" Mapping is one of the most basic skills we need to develop for a portrait. More accurate is our map, fewer problems we will have afterward. Basically, the technique to succeed with the spaghetti line is to work with the automatic drawing together with the blind drawing. What are they? The automatic drawing is the exercise of making lines without stopping on the paper. As in poetry, the automatic writing consists of writing whatever passes through your mind, the automatic drawing is the drawing lines following your own flow. From my view, this kind of drawing is relevant to: 1) eliminate any fear you may have in making something wrong. 2) find your expressive lines. 3) connect you with an intuitive and instinctive way of drawing, stopping your "controlling mind". Stop thinking, just go! The blind drawing is the exercise of making a drawing looking to the model only, never the page. To succeed in it, you have to synchronize your eyes with your arm and hand. From my view, this kind of drawing is relevant to: 1) be in the right position for drawing. 2) get a psycho-motor correlation in a bodily way, without any need of making bi-dimensional measuring extending your arm. 3) stay connected intuitively and instinctively with your drawing. What does the spaghetti line bring? Mixing both techniques we get the so-called for me "spaghetti line". The good thing of the spaghetti lines is that together with the former skills, it brings also playful skills to: 1) make accurate measures. 2) make distinctions by identifying areas of all kind: in terms of shape, in terms of light, in terms of the relations between them, etc.

Sculpting drawing for understanding the light  The head is a volume. We never going to succeed in drawing it if we don't know how to manage a volume whatever so that we don't know how to solve the way the light touches the peculiar face we have in front of us. We need to recognize the sides of her or his head-face (as if it were a box we need to sculpt) in order to understand why the light is bright in that specific spot and why some other area gets darker. Therefore, we need to learn how to trace an analysis in terms of the volume of the head-face. Only having incorporated this exercise, we will be able to make a mass drawing in timing. From my view, this exercise help in developing the skill of: 1) understanding the reason why the light behaves like this in this peculiar model. 2) guarantying the consistency of the volume, proportions, and directions (perspective) of the different features of the face-head. How to succeed with the sculpting drawing? Play first building prototypes of all kind in 3D, so you can practice the basic behavior of the light imaginarily. Then, when you have the life model in front of you, you just need to follow her or his proportions.

Mass drawing step 1: stencil style block in After having practiced the spaghetti line and the sculping drawing, the first step of mass drawing is almost there. I call it: stencil. For this step, you have to practice the way to be accurate in distinguishing on the one side the maximum darkness and on the other side the middle gray and light together. It looks simple, but in reality, if you have no practice in knowing where is what you are super lost. That is why the former exercises are very important. Note: for this first step we can work with charcoal, but also with inc and a candle. I will show you by then. It is super fun!

Mass drawing step 2: middle tones block in keeping the highest contrasts This is a good spot to share additional resources like downloadable content, available apps, or a product registration link.

Mass drawing step 3: Refinement and completion This is the second charcoal I made in my life. But it is the only one in which I worked hard in getting the right refinement of the eyes and nose. With the refinement in the mass drawing, you elaborate the subtle differences in tones-values in order to get closer to the skin and flesh of the portrayed. The refinement has to be made in all the drawing. In my case here, I did it just in the eyes and nose in order to attract the eyes of the spectator to that area only. You don't care too much about what is happening with the rest, you go directly to that triangle. This is because the refinement is there and nowhere else.

Chiaroscuro One of the most poetic techniques in drawing is the chiaroscuro (dark-light contrast). In it, you insinuate the whole figure by just managing the light accurately. You don´t need to say all, you have to say just what you need. The rest is fulfilled by the imagination.

Neat Chiaroscuro This drawing represents partially what I would call a neat chiaroscuro. In a neat chiaroscuro, the shape would be open to the white background (instead of a deep darkness of the normal chiaroscuro). In this case, the hair plays its role as delimiting the figure to make a more POP result, that is why it is not exactly a neat chiaroscuro even though the white of the paper is playing a role as well. The neat chiaroscuro is usually used for babies portraits.

Turning to color The end of the sequence is about color. Color is a new world, only possible to do not get deeply traumatized thanks to having already mastered the values (tones). To work well at this level, we will start with black and white pastels and a gray paper as a middle tone in what we can call as dessin au deux crayons. Later we will add another color and so on.