M2M Day 56: Drawing portraits is like doing your laundry
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For December, my goal is to draw a realistic self-portrait with only pencil and paper.
After spending nearly a month learning to draw portraits, I’m more convinced than ever that anyone can draw. Even if you don’t have any artistic talent.
To me, drawing is a bit like doing your laundry. Before you do it for the first time, you feel it’s much more complicated than it actually is, and thus, you feel incapable of trying. Then, you’re shown that doing your laundry is only a matter of putting your clothes in the machine, pouring in some soap, and clicking a button. Much easier than you thought.
It turns out drawing is very similar. From the outside, it seems much more complex than it actually is. However, once you learn the two or three basic principles, drawing (at least, at my level) becomes nearly as straight forward as doing your laundry.
In fact, in order to draw a reasonable portrait, you only need to know the two following skills:
1. Triangulation
2. “Outside-in” Shading
Once you’re equipped with these two techniques, you’ll be ready to follow the “Portrait Drawing Cheat Sheet” and draw your first portrait.
You’ll be surprised at how well it goes. I know I was…
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
