Martin Chow

Art 1020

Sketchbook #3

Master drawing by John Singer Sargent

Chapter 9: Facing Forward: Portrait Drawing with Ease

When drawing faces there are a lot of stigma people have when drawing. A lot of times their
drawings simply dont look right. Theres a reason for this, its because we as humans perceive
things differently and sometimes wrongly. When dealing with faces its especially important for
the right-side of the brain because its where humans have recognition and association with
people. There are a few things to remember that are necessary and key to creating a good
facial or portrait drawing, they are edges, spaces, and relationships. Proportions are a concept
that are key to making a good portrait because it deals with the size representation of different
portions of the face due to assumptions the brain makes to simplify what we perceive. This is
why drawing faces are so difficult. Its the ability on believing what you see and not believing
what you see, these kinds of assumptions our brain makes for us makes it so its difficult to draw
a good face accurately. Emphasis is automatically thought of into important and unimportant
features, for instance, eyes are things that are typically unimportant thus they are drawn small,
and only makes them appear smaller in prospect to everything else. This is what leads to the
chopped-off skull, when everything appears out of place it creates this kind of illusion to what is
actually there and what is not. Of course there are also a lot of rule to thumbs when dealing with
faces such as the lining up of the upper ear and the eye and the end of the nose to the lower
ear. Eyes naturally exist closer to the middle of the face and rarely o lower bottom of it. Its
simple rules of thumb and exercises that will dictate the quality of the face however.

Chapter 10: The Value of Logical Lights and Shadows

Shading or also known as light logic is a thing that is key in drawing portraits or drawings that
have a kind of light source element to them. It helps exemplify the 3 dimensions of drawings and
faces. Using light logic allows people to help differentiate different levels of light and dark known
as tones. Eventually, these skills lead into other kinds of concepts like edges, shapes, and
perspective, all of which are aspects that will lead to elements especially used in painting.
Moving on, the right side of the brain helps categorize the interpretations of the shapes and
lighting present in a piece. When a drawing is upside down everything becomes unapparent, but
once its shifted back everything falls back into the contours of the face and the lighting with it.
The concepts will stay the same when drawing the different kinds of self-portraits that exist: full
face, profile, and three-quarter view. These different views relating back to chapter 9 deal with
the elements represented earlier to give the visual feel wanted in the artwork. Continuing on,
observation and proper perception and representation of the object must be in order to complete
a drawing that has a likeness to their real-life counterpart. Squinting and viewing the same
object specifically will help emphasize what you need to draw, instead of what your mind makes
up for you. The next stage in drawing a self-portrait is crosshatching. This is a term used for
creating a variety of tones/values in a drawing. Its the mark of a seasoned artist, practice by
making groups of parallel marks or sets and swinging the marks into a certain direction, angle,
and darkness. Theres a lot of variety of hatching that can be made, and is almost like a
signature of the artist. It helps in creating the shapes, relationships of angles and proportions
represented through the different crosshatches you making a drawing. In drawing the frontal
view observe your own face in the mirror and compare the width of one of the eyes, divide the
eye in fifths and use it to help visualize your own triangle on your face with your chin and nose.
Make appropriate sizing when making ears as they are larger than they appear. In three-quarter
view, the key is to just draw what you see without questioning. Finding specific aids in the face
is also helpful in finding the right shape. Once again, there are a lot of elements that you have to
deal with when making faces and with faces with light tones only makes the smallest details
easier to notice.

Reflection:

Overall, the experience in drawing the face was a good one. There were a lot of attempts made
before I managed to get a decent looking nose. The drawing itself looks relatively easy at a first
glance with a lot of very straightforward and simple details. When drawing however, it was
things like the proportions and shape of the nose that really made the difference in the entire
face. Some tips I tried using while trying to get it right was drawing it upside down, which made
it look bad in the first attempt, but got much better the second time around. The squiggly hairs
and ear were hard to completely replicate because the ways lines sometimes just trailed off to
the rest of the face. Its hard to take the face, at face value because of this. There are just stray
hairs that look out of place, but at home and changes the drawing when left out entirely. I
improved in a lot of ways while trying this out, it seems much like a contour, but really the
capture of the negative and positive shapes made it appear much better and helped as I went to
draw the other details like eyes, eyebrows, and lips. Something I would like to improve as I
continue with line, value and portrait drawing are the proportions. Even when I would draw
things right in the wrong areas they would look completely wrong. That will definitely be a point
of interest of improving in the future as I continue to draw portrait paintings and really anything
else dealing with perspective and angles.