A question about drawing portraits and getting better at drawing portraits popped up on my threads feed. Appropriate right? Before I could respond, a response from an artist I respect responded with (I paraphrased here,) “You have to draw a portrait perfectly because the viewer will know when something is off.” Then she wrote (again paraphrasing,) “You need to draw from LIFE!”
Those are two statement that I can not disagree with more. Let’s discuss that second statement, “You need to draw from life.” Woof, that’s a big one. Yeah, drawing from life is best but if you are just learning for funsies, it can be hard to draw from life.
I want to also point out that this artist is really coming from a place of privilege. They have a supportive spouse, live in a nice home, kids are out of the house, their spouse has a good job and she doesn’t hold down a full time job OTHER THAN BEING AN ARTIST.
Drawing from life means that you can go and draw or paint at the time of day when the light is right. I got out of work today and the sun was setting. If I had driven to a spot to paint, even if it were only 5 minutes away, I would have set up my easel or gotten out my tools and made art for 15 minutes. Some time but not a lot of time. Sometimes I’m able to make art on my way to work, but not always.
If it weren’t for photos I would never have made the progress I have made in make portraits.
Many artists take photo references and use them in the studio to supplement their sketches made on site. Some artists never make art on site, they just take pictures when they are out and about and then make their images in studio.
Yes, I like drawing from life but I also acknowledge that giving advice to someone asking for help like, “YOU MUST DRAW FROM LIFE” is garbage.
Artists can be such assholes sometimes.
Now statement number 1: UNless you are attempting to draw in photorealism, you do not need to be perfect. People’s eyes will fill in the blanks. How does this person thing caricature works? You exaggerate and the viewer’s mind will make the connections. You get it close and the viewer’s mind will recognize that person.
I drew a picture of one of my coworkers. To me, it looks NOTHING like him. It was off- the face too long, eyes not right, and just not right.
I had my sketchbook open to that page in my studio when my coworkers stopped by, she noticed the image and asked if it was from the meeting we were both in and pointed to the picture of our mutual coworker and said, “Did you SEE the faces he was making when so-and-so was speaking?” I knew in an instant that SHE recognized the coworker. Not because I was photorealistic, but because it looked ENOUGH like him that she filled in the blanks.
See also cartoons- my cartoon me image looks like me, not because it’s photo realistic but because I have enough details there for your brain to fill in my face over that cartoon face.
It’s why you can look at a smiley face and know it’s a representation of a human face smiling.
Anyway, you don’t have to draw perfect faces. You can draw wonky image that kinda look like a face. You can like wonky faces or you can say, “I want these to be a little more realistic.”
If you want to be more realistic, get drawing. Get a pencil and a sketchbook and start drawing. You need MILES on that pencil before you can get more realistic and feel good about it. Every drawing you make gets you closer to that realistic goal.
Also you don’t have to draw from life, ever if you don’t want to. Head over to instagram and ask your friends if you can draw from their selfies. Find an account like @earthsworld and draw, draw, draw. Then draw some more. (Don’t sell art made from someone’s insta post, that copyright violation!!!)((There are insta accounts that post images that you can use freely and make art for sale from. Same for facebook. There are loads of free reference sites. Find them and use them if you want to make art to sell.)
Drawing from photos is valid no matter what anyone says.