There’s no denying that portraits are a tricky business, but after practicing for many years now, I feel that I have mastered the basics. Fine tuning is always necessary, but I rarely make drawings that are so bad I have to tear them up anymore. I have a new challenge coming up though – a portrait of a baby – something I have never done before. Drawing children is a whole new thing for me, so I’ll be looking through my art books and doing a lot of practice sketches.
I haven’t done any portraits in a number of months, so I wanted to get some practice in the other day as a sort of warm up exercise. This is a self portrait with wet hair, done in graphite in my craft paper sketchbook. I can see a lot of problems with it, but my boyfriend immediately recognized it as me, which is always a good sign.
I am always looking for artists who do great portraits. Many of them hone their skills by sketching people on the subways and trains. Here are a couple of artists that do great portrait work. Leave a comment with a link if you come across any others.
Cully
France Belleville
Lauren Nassef
Adebanji Alade
Stephen Gardner
2 Comments