Michael Britton

Portrait Drawing | An Overview

Free Drawing Lessons
Online Workshops
Blog | The Blackboard Articles
About
artacademy.com

GET YOUR FREE

How to Draw the Facial
Features Ebook!

Drawing Lessons for Beginners:

Drawing the Cast
Drawing from the cast has
a history as long as drawing
itself. Its uses are manifold
in terms of an artists
training.
In classic ateliers cast
drawing is used to train
artists in sight-sizing.
Traditional sight-sizing is a
laborious method of
drawing and is not for
beginners. In my own
teaching I have found
comparative or relative
sight-sizing to be a much
more effective and versatile
tool for artists of every
level and I teach it right
from day one in my
Beginning to Draw Workshop and Mastering Portrait Drawing:
the frontal pose.
But cast drawing has even greater uses. There is perhaps no
more useful method for training the artist to see abstract tonal
shape i.e. the effects of light and dark on three dimensional
form, and to train the eye and brain to recognize a broad
range of tonal gradation.

This free ebook is your

indispensable handbook on
how to draw all the features
of the face! Six chapters
detailing step-by-step how to
draw the eyes, nose, mouth
(and the smile), the ears and
the collar bones!
Just subscribe to my Drawing
Ezine, confirm your
subscription and get even
more free portrait drawing
lessons!
Subscribe to the Drawing
EZine! It is always FREE!
There's never an obligation
and your privacy is
completely ensured. We
never, ever lend, rent, nor sell
your email address. And you
can unsubscribe at any time.
The Artacademy Drawing
EZine
Name
Email

submit

converted by W eb2PDFConvert.com

Without tonal depth your drawings will fall flat literally. But as you develop an artists eye you
will start to sense and see much sublter variations of light and dark and it is these variations in
tone and the correct observation of their shape that will bring your work to life!
And this is one of the great secrets of artists they draw and paint shape. Not complex
individual features, not objects but accurately judged tonal shapes. It is shape and tone that
directs the pictorial surface and upon which harmonious compositions are based.
Whereas at first you may struggle to see more than 5 tones, by focusing on seeing the shape
of each piece of tone you will soon develop your eye to see and physically duplicate 10 or more
shades of tone. The gradated scale exercise in the Beginning to Draw Workshop is the starting
point and should be practised often.
Developing a tonal eye is best begun using only black and white. Recognizing tonal gradations
within color or hue requires knowledge of color theory and an understanding of tint and tone.
This is covered in my Applied Color Theory Workshop which comprises the textbook and
workbook in PDF on CDrom or as an instant download.

Abstracting Shape & Tone A

Drawing Exercise
The biggest hurdle faced by the beginning artist when
drawing a portrait is the tendency to focus on the features;
all too often scant attention is given to the overall shape of
the head and even less attention to the abstract shapes of
form. The purpose of this exercise is to correct this
tendency.
Cast drawing has for centuries been the surest approach to
building up the portrait artists tool-box of skills. There are
many ways of considering the cast drawing: what usually
comes to mind are the highly resolved academic drawings
in which one can easily spend a hundred hours, and more,
working on. The absolute beginner should be using the cast
to develop their skills of observing and striking the
arabesque or overall shape. Once that fundamental skill has
been acquired the next step is to accurately inscribe the
overall light and dark shapes within the arabesque. The
lesson I want to impart here is to employ the cast to
analyze abstracted shape. In the drawing above I have
limited myself to three tones: a flat dark, a midtone and
white.
The thrust of the lesson is to render a portrait without actually articulating any of the features.
Instead the agenda is to ascribe an area of flat shape and to build up the head as if it were a still
life drawing. The flat shapes will suggest the facial features while the viewers innate sense of
closure will complete the drawing for you there is not need then to elaborate and exaggerate,
say, the eyes.
Working from a white plaster cast is best. You dont need
high-end replicas of classical statuary, if you have access to
them, then, of course use and enjoy them for your studies.
Garden ornaments (gargoyles, dogs, cats, etc.) are
excellent reference material. For many years I used a little
bronze bird that I bought in a gardening shop in Seattle. She
was simply designed and possessed of elegant lines; a
deceptive little bird she was extremely tough to draw.
For this lesson I took a photograph of the statue of Hamlet
from the Gower Memorial to Shakespeare in StratfordUpon-Avon in the UK.
Using either charcoal, soft graphite or 2B black conte on a
quarter sheet, or smaller, piece of drawing paper (my paper
is 8.27 X 11.69 which is the A4 standard size) strike the
overall shape and proportion of the arabesque as Ive
shown here. As always, less is more. There is no need for
any kind of detail here. Our agenda is SHAPE.

converted by W eb2PDFConvert.com

At the end of this I have included a high resolution photograph of my reference for your use for
this exercise.
Once your arabesque has been struck, its height/width proportion checked and the overall
shape corresponding accurately with the models pose the primary landmarks are then
established.
The most important landmark in portrait drawing is the brow-ridge. This is the large, lateral
skeletal structure (called the Supra Orbital Eminence) upon which the eyebrows lay. Generally
you are looking for a specific point on the brow ridge that you can readily refer back to. Every
portrait drawing will have a slightly different reference point depending upon the model, the pose
and even the lighting.
... next page

Online Watercolor
Course

Dick Blick Art Materials

watercolortutor.com

Outstanding Selection &

Service. Save By Buying Art
Supplies Online!

The most complete online

watercolor course. From
beginner to expert

dickblick.com

500 Business Cards $9.99

vistaprint.com/customizedbizcards

Fast Shipping. Design your

Premium Business Cards
Online for $9.99.

Like 408,768 people like this. Sign Up to see what your friends like.

Portrait Drawing | Drawing Lessons | Workshops | Blog | About | The Drawing EZine | Contact
Copyright 1998-2014 Artacadem y.com . All rights reserved.

converted by W eb2PDFConvert.com