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# The golden path for Drawing portraits or How I learned to draw portraits

Portraits. It's a love-hatred Story between IT and artists. Like a particular sportbrand and sneakerheads .... Kof !

Like I Said Artists love and hate drawing portraits... When it's well done, it shows you off as an accomplished artist and when it's badly done... Yeah... Your self-esteem will drop in the abyss.

Let's look at how we can avoid it (most of the time) :

## 1. Prioritize already drawn portraits as references

Drawn portraits ( in case of semi-realistic and stylized art style) are already simplified making it easier to be understood by your brain. It's way better to draw them from a photo - filled with a thousand details that most of us will try to crap every single one of them on paper.

## 2. Blocking Out

It's quite easy to miss the correct proportions of your portrait. Sometimes it's the left eye that's disproportionate, sometimes the forehead is too big or too small. You get it ....

The easiest way to fix it is to block out. Draw the main (aka the biggest) shape first, it's now the limit of your portrait, it will become more difficult to cross over - and flopping. You can block out in the main shape smaller features like the lips,eyes and nose. Personally, I use this method when it gets really tough sometimes.

## 3. Watch YouTube and Pinterest Tutorial

Note *everything* down what was said in YouTube videos. For Pinterest, you can add at the end of your research the word "study". Many Studies done by other artists will be shown. It's helpful and interesting, to see how artists take different approaches for the same topic.

## 4. Simplify your shapes

Break your (already drawn) reference into basic shapes. Trace over it and *try to see* these shapes or the combination of them. "Oh,it's a rectangle fusioned with a triangle" ; "Hey.... It looks like a losange but squished" Try it out.

## 5. Go to simple to complex

Don't draw details at the beginning. Seriously don't. It tempting to make every inch good looking. But, remember that your portrait it's gonna be looked ... From away. Most of the time. The tiny details that you added with love (aka blood and tears) will not be seen. Try not to zoom in too much. I don't have this problem when drawing on phone, used to traditional art, zooming in there it's very limited.

## 6. Leave your comfort zone

I drew a good amount of portraits. In Front View. I became unstoppable. My portraits looked fantastic. My confidence was at his highest peak. So I decided to draw portraits in different views. They flop hard. I spended so much time drawing portraits in front view. ONLY. And believed it will be the same for the other type of views. Spoiler = It wasn't. Don't stick too long in your comfort zone (aka the new thing that you just mastered). Move to the next thing.

## 7. Think outside of your box

Great. Now we know how to avoid certain type of problems. Everything is fine.... Yes.... Isn't ?

> Looking a tuto, applying it, it's only 1% of the work. 99% of the work, is *offline*.

> - Vaughn Eugene

In other terms, you need to rely on what you learned, trying to understand it **without** additional Infos. Try to squeeze the max amount of information from the resources (YouTube Video, Pinterest ) that you watched or used. Also the best way not to forget what you learn, is remembering that piece of information. Our brains tend to forget (aka erasing) things that we don't use, to free the storage for new things. Repeating can avoid these situations. Note down what makes this portraits 3/4 View, or another one front view. In the vast majority of tutos that you come across YouTube & Co. The video will introduce you to one face drawing technique. Which is completely fine – we must start somewhere. But most art babies stick only with this one particular technique that they learned. Loomis, Cube, Paper, Sealing, etc. Try them all out. In different positions. You will notice some techniques work better in a particular view. I recently tried the cube and the paper head – I draw only freehand. At the end of my little experience, the Loomis method worked well for front view and paper head in 3/4 view.

# Mœbius 🌌 

This week, I discovered a painting... And was amazed by everything on it ! It was painted by Jean Giraud aka Mœbius, a legendary french comic Artist. He is the creator of **Blueberry, À la recherche du temps** and other. His paintings are... Particular in their own ways. Vast orangish deserts with translucide crystal rocks rising to the blue sky, his characters contemplating the view, are like swallowed by the landscape. A balanced use of complementary colors. Stories set sometimes in a far future in space, sometimes in antique Greece, sometimes in the far West. It's striking without being offensive, it's vivid without being loud and it's telling stories without info dumping.

I want to make paintings like that too.... 😭 

# My first attempt with acrylic .....

Was...meh. One month ago, I bought acrylic paint (and new brushes) completely excited. So, I did what e0very person who has access to the internet does when they buy something new, but don't know how to use it. I searched on YouTube. After watching some videos, I felt ready to use them – last week. Don't ask me why.

/

I opened the box containing 12 acrylic painting, pour and mixed randomly some colors on the mixing palette. And made some brush strokes, to see what it looks like.

But there was a problem... I poured too much paint. "I can reactivate it one day with water–". Acrylic *isn't* watercolor, I remembered. *Sigh*. Pouring more paint. Mixing them. And trying to make something out of it.

It was strange – the bright colors, the thickness of the paint and the SMELL. It has a very singular odor. Also acrylic isn't fluid like watercolor, I was surprised (and confused) not to see the painting spreading across the yellowish paper of my notebook. Which led us to the next point: acrylic is consuming! In one session, I already applied ⅛ of my 12ml (oz) purple tube. It's heartbreaking when, I remember, it wasn't *that* cheap...

# Fun facts 📒 

Vikings were the first people to introduce the English to sarcasm.

There is a company (I forget their name) who makes notebooks out of stones...

The latin words "Dominus" and “Domina" meant Chef or Boss.

# Referral Video

How I draw HEAD in Any Angle