The first step as in striking an arabesque is to let your eyes fall slightly out-of-focus. This is called ‘soft eye’. With a ‘soft eye’ proportion and shape are more easily seen. ‘Soft eye’ also helps circumvent the lurking problem of those limbic symbolic preconceptions that will frustrate you as you learn to draw.

To constantly train your eye and to improve you must always draw first and verify your accuracy second. There is very little to gain by pre-measuring. Pre-measuring the height and width of a portrait may seem expedient at first, but in the near, and long, run it will hold you back.

When striking the initial arabesque always use small, straight lines. This will impart a sense of structure and of underlying bone and tissue. Round, curving lines is a symbolic preconception. The human head is not an oval it more closely approximates the rectilinear.

Looking at my arabesque, which I have drawn with straight, architectonic lines, I have also paid particular attention to the symmetry of the head. In portrait drawing the term Symmetry does not refer to a similarity of parts. Symmetry is defined as beauty resulting from correct proportion and rhythm; it is a dynamic correspondence of one part to another within a whole.