Blog

I recently taught a week–long workshop in Texas and then returned to jury the Pastel Journal’s Pastel 100 Competition, (Figure and Portrait category). Those two experiences back-to-back remind me that, for artists, drawing is the most important skill! If our drawing is off, masterful value, color temperature relationships and edges won’t save the painting. Drawing is the first thing most jurors look at…and most art buyers.

All the great masters were excellent draftsmen. Drawing is especially important if we’re painting a portrait or figure. The great illustrator, Norman Rockwell once said “The viewer will forgive anything…except for the face and hands.”

Fortunately, drawing is mostly measurement. If we are accurate in our observation of shapes, direction, angle and distance and replicate those measurements on our canvas it HAS to look like our subject. The good news is that drawing is a trainable skill; the bad news is that it takes a lot of practice to get good at it.

Here are a few steps from a handout I wrote on measuring the proportions of the head. (I skipped fifteen steps and the explanations.) If you’d like a copy of that handout (Drawing From the Inside Out) e-mail me and I will forward it to you. There are also many great books on drawing;  Henry Yan, Zhaoming Wu, and Andrew Loomis are a few authors who come to mind.