Tricks of the Trade - How to Draw People Well

ACHIEVING A GOOD LIKENESS.

If you are struggling to draw with accuracy someone who is sitting in front of you, then it might be useful to work from a photograph of them instead. The reason for this is that you can practice the 'grid' method, which will encourage you to measure lines and areas of tones more accurately.

It's very simple - make a copy of the photo that you are working from and using a ruler, divide it into about 8 equally sized squares. Then draw the same number of squares in faint lines onto your paper. This should help you to judge relative distances between parts of the face and breaks down the whole of the face into more manageable chunks to be copied.

The benefit of practising using the grid method is that it teaches you that drawing is about measuring and gauging distances between objects by eye. It also encourages you to view a face you may be drawing not as a composite of eyes, nose, mouth and so on but as a collection of abstract lines and areas of different tone.

People often tend to assume that artistic 'talent' is entirely to do with a strong hand-to-eye co-ordination. In fact what artists are doing is continually measuring, appraising, and comparing sizes and distances. Anyone can learn to do this! If you practice enough using the grid method you will eventually learn to mentally 'measure up' a face with much more accuracy, without actually drawing lines across it.

This leads me to my next tip - if you want to buy one book on 'how to draw' then make it this one: 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' by Betty Edwards (ISBN: 0874774241) I should point out here that I have no personal connection with this author or self interest in promoting her book! But I have learnt more about drawing from it than any other. Edwards uses the terms 'Left mode' and 'Right mode' to designate two ways of apprehension - the linear, verbal, analytical mode (often associated with the left side of the brain) and the visual perceptual mode (thought to be found more in the right side).

Learning to draw in fact means learning to look, to make the shift from left mode to right mode, which is associated with processing of visual stimuli and spatial manipulation.

What does this mean, in simple language? Take an example given in the book of a line drawing of the Russian composer Stravinsky by Pablo Picasso. Edwards reproduces the drawing both the right way up, and upside down. If you try to copy both images, you are likely to find that the copy you made from the upside down drawing is far more accurate. Why is this? Because your verbal, analytical brain is unable to identify what it is seeing.

Instead of seeing an eye - and making you jump to any preconceived ideas of what an eye actually looks like - on the upside down image your brain can only see a series of connected lines and shapes. You mentally assess the lengths and sizes of these lines and shapes and the relationship between them without the interruption of 'language' - ie without your brain being able to name what it is seeing and trying to instruct you on how it should appear.

To take another example - most beginners when painting a shadow will automatically decide it to be a grey colour. They will almost certainly not have really looked at the shadow in question to test this belief! The common assumption that a shadow is grey will prevent them from really LOOKING at the area of tone that they are painting and correctly identifying the range of colours - probably blues, yellows, purples, greens - that it is actually comprised of (for the best lesson in the colours to be found in shadows, look at Monet's paintings of Rouen's cathedral, in different weather conditions:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouen_Cathedral_ (Monet).

In summary, when you draw, try to forget that you are drawing a face or a body. Focus on the image in front of you as a collection of abstract shapes in different tones and work your way around them methodically. If you are copying from a photograph and are really stuck, try turning the photo and your portrait upside down! The sudden unfamiliarity of the shapes you will see will very quickly help you to detect any areas that you have copied inaccurately.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR PORTRAIT LOOK MORE PROFESSIONAL.

The biggest mistake I think you can make with a pencil drawing is something we probably all learnt to do at school - that is rubbing the pencil marks with our fingers to smooth the shading on the face we have drawn. I try never to do this, even if I'm tempted! There are a number of reasons to avoid it. Firstly, you risk damaging the paper with the oil that naturally occurs in your fingertips.

Secondly I think the effect of rubbing in the pencil is to create a really dull image and a rather 'airbrushed', dated look, and thirdly you have very little control over the darkness of the tone you want to indicate. I've found it particularly helpful in learning to create tone with pencil strokes to look at historical portraits from the 18th and 19th centuries. Here you notice that these artists never, ever deliberately smudged their pencil lines! Instead they built up darker areas of tone with delicate cross hatched lines, which allow the eye still to register the tiny specks of white paper in between.

What you end up with is a luminosity that is preserved even in the darker, highly shadowed areas of the face. Meanwhile, the mid tones of the face also retain their luminosity, and the skin will appear to have a much more natural complexion than the grey faces that would otherwise result. Hatching also creates an added degree of 'movement' and life to your image as the eye is drawn to follow the direction of the lines you have created. I also try to make sure that around a third of the face is left as plain unshaded paper! This may feel counter to one's instincts when drawing a pencil portrait but it creates a much more lively and delicate portrait.

The final tip I can recommend is also taken from historical portraits. That is to vary the amount of detail between different areas of the drawing. I try to concentrate the most detail around the face and in particular the eyes. This seems to me to be the most important part of the image - it defines the likeness of the portrait, and should be the register of the expression and mood of it's subject. I then put less detail into the hair and neck, and by the time I reach the shoulders, chest and arms, I often leave these very sketchy and lacking in any tonal shading. The effect of this is to draw the eye of the person viewing the painting to the most important part of it which is after all the face of the subject. Look at the British Museum's catalogue 'The Intimate Portrait' by Kim Sloan and Stephen Lloyd (ISBN: 978 1 906270 14 8) for some inspiration from some wonderful 18th century portraits, and try to see as much historical drawing in museums and galleries as you can!

Anna Bregman is a portrait artist. She studied design at Wimbledon School of Art and Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design, and also Art History at University College London. She now works as a portrait artist for private clients and for the film industry. She specialises in children's portraits.

Article Source: Tricks of the Trade - How to Draw People Well

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