I'm interested in being able to do a semi-realistic portrait... I say "semi" because, in general, I don't normally have a strong desire (or the patience) to draw realistically but there is something magical about being able to capture a face in a drawing*.
(*Not that a drawing needs to be "realistic" to capture a face - but realism is just tickling my fancy at the moment...)
Unfortunately, despite going to art school, I know next to nothing about how to do this*.
(*This is because, they really don't teach any kind of classical technique at art school... at least not a decade ago and/or not where I went to school.)
So I post the little drawing below as a "baseline". This is where I'm at without having done any research into the matter of making a (kind of) realistic portrait.
I don't even want to say who it is because I'll get laughed off the block... or the blog...It's not that I think it's a horrible drawing... it just looks nothing LIKE WHO IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE!
It's from a photo I got off the internet. I probably shouldn't have started with such a grainy photo with such weird lighting.
I know that some people, when working from photos, use a grid technique. I'm not sure if I want to do that kind of thing or not...
a) I don't think I have the patience for it and,
b) even though it would feed my ego to do a very precise thing that easily attracts praise, I don't think I would get much learning-value from it in the long run.
Then again, it wouldn't hurt to try it.
(Ack! Internal-artschool-snob-struggle-angst!)
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