Learn to Draw Step by Step - the arabesque in portrait drawing

In portrait drawing, the arabesque is the entire positive shape, the gestalt (whole) of the head. The arabesque incorporates the proportion (height/width ratio), the shape and the symmetry. Thus within the arabesque is communicated the likeness and emotion of the portrait drawing.

As we learn to draw the portrait the arabesque is the first critical step to be realized. But herein lay a significant drawing problem: looking and seeing.

When we look at a face a complex schematic comes into play. Whereas we all see the same face our mind’s eye (the limbic receptors) compresses the visual image into a symbol or paradigm. These paradigms (models of experience) are patterns that our limbic receptors have classified as symbols.

As you begin to learn how to draw portraits what initially happens is that we end up drawing a symbol of a face. The same holds true when we draw the features such as the eyes, nose, mouth, etc.

The first objective, as you learn to draw, is how to see visually rather than symbolically - not an easy task.

Learning how to draw is a process of reprogramming the mind’s eye. To this end there is a skill-set that has been developed over the centuries since the Renaissance. Remarkable as the drawings of Raphael and Michelangelo are it is exponentially more stunning when one realizes that they had to re-invent drawing as we know it.

Foremost of these hard-won skills is the ability to ‘strike the arabesque’. Once this drawing skill is acquired a vast vista of drawing possibilities is opened.