portrait drawing portraits

beginner drawing portraits

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First we draw what we think we see; then we draw what we know; finally, we see what we know.

Robert B. Hale

Acquiring a solid foundational skill-set for drawing takes about three to six months of dedicated study and practice.

In your initial study the most important skill to be developed is the ability to strike the arabesque with a consistent accuracy of shape and proportion.

Everything else builds upon and is a refinement of this one all-important skill.

And this one skill is easily learned.
portrait drawing portraits

Beginning to Draw

The critical matrix of skills that the beginner artist needs to acquire is the ability to accurately assess proportion and shape and the understanding of rendering plastic form (which is the illusion of 3-dimensionality in realist drawing).

Accurately assessing and drawing an object's outside shape is called striking the arabesque.

Other terms for this are contour, mise en trait, and outline. I prefer the term arabesque as it implies a dynamic gestural rhythm imparting a sense of life into one's drawing.

Acquiring the ability to consistently strike an accurate arabesque is the singular foundation upon which your drawing and painting skills are subsequently built and honed.

For the beginner this is the first important skill to be learned.
beginner drawing

An excellent training exercise is drawing a crumpled paper bag. Pictured here are the four main stages: the arabesque, fixing the landmarks, blocking in and plastic resolution of tone.

The entire process of realist drawing is comprehensively taught in my Beginning to Draw DVD Workshop.

This all-important skill is easily learned by working through a series of deceptively simple exercises that quickly build up your powers of observation and spatial awareness.

The next drawing lesson for the beginner is to learn how to accurately gauge the internal proportions of their subject. This is establishing, or fixing, the placement of the major land-marks. In portrait drawing this would be the features (eyes, nose, hairline, etc.).

Once the beginner has a working competency in striking the arabesque and fixing the landmarks in their drawing the subsequent skill to be developed is rendering tone. Rendering tone, more commonly known as shading, is what creates the illusion of 3-dimensional reality in your drawing.

Rendering tone convincingly requires the drawing skills of blocking in, cross-hatching, edging (soft & hard), understanding the effects of light, lifting out and stumping in.

This illusion of 3-dimensional reality is called plasticity. Plasticity is defined as giving form to an object.

The artist lacking these skills will quickly realize their importance as they continue to struggle with their drawing over and over again.

Do you find yourself struggling with the same issues in every drawing? Is the proportion in your drawing always a bit off, or the shape doesn't look quite right. Is your shading (tone) scratchy and unconvincing? These drawing problems are the same for every beginner.

The critical foundational skills of accurately striking the arabesque and convincingly rendering tone can be acquired - when properly taught.

And this is the important distinction.

As a beginner your initial focus should be on acquiring the drawing skill of striking the arabesque. This is a two-part process: first, you need to learn how to accurately adjudge proportion; second, assessing shape is the next step.

Possessing the singular skill of accurately striking an arabesque is the most important lesson the beginner can acquire. It is this skill that most people equate with drawing 'talent'. Yet striking an arabesque is easily learned.

The Skeptical Artist

Both my teaching and art experience has shown me that the single biggest obstacle to learning is the 'ego'. Beginners, generally, do not have an 'art ego' and consequently their learning curve is quite steep. They progress rapidly. The self-taught artist is quite often resistant to new and different methods and sooner or later will hit a wall where lacking a foundation of practical technical skill prevents further growth and artistic development.

Even the trained artist will plateau and find further progress slow and, yes, painful. The solution for the trained artist who has stalled is to completely strip down their art making process and rebuild it. This will strike most artists as unpalatable. But I have been there, several times, and it is really the only way to break bad habits. It all comes down to having a solid foundation of drawing.

As a beginner, or even an experienced artist who feels that they are lacking the all-important foundational skills my Beginning to Draw DVD Workshop has been developed solely to teach and train you to draw accurately. My Beginning to Draw Workshop has trained many, many artists worldwide with excellent results. Learning to draw to a high level from a DVD is effective.

The first 2-hour DVD of my Beginning to Draw Workshop trains you to accurately strike the arabesque of practically anything! The initial exercises are deceptively simple but also the most important.

The second 2-hour DVD trains you how to see and render tone. The focus is on drawing the still-life.

The third 2-hour DVD is your introduction to portrait drawing.

Also included is the entire 6-hour Beginning to Draw Workshop on CD. This 70 page textbook reinforces your learning of these critical drawing skills.

Plus you also get my newest workshop Drawing Drapery on CD-r plus four supplementary drawing tutorials. This is more content than in an entire art school course by itself.
beginner drawing
portrait drawing portraits

And best of all, if my Beginning to Draw DVD Workshop does not meet every one of your expectations I will refund your money.

In fact, you have an entire year, 365 days, to decide if my Beginning to Draw DVD Workshop has really improved your drawing.

Who else stands this firmly behind their teaching?

Play the 10-minute movie file below for an example of what you will learn in the Beginning to Draw DVD Workshop. This lesson on striking the arabesque is from the Introduction to Portrait Drawing which is Disk 3 of the workshop.

If you are an absolute beginner don't be intimidated by this lesson; my Beginning to Draw DVD Workshop will have you drawing at this level in a short time; training you step-by-step with a layered approach starting with easy to learn exercises.

You will need Flash Player which is already installed on most computers these days. This sample lesson has been greatly compressed (otherwise it would take forever to load); the DVDs, of course, are of much, much higher quality.

Here's an example of what my Beginning to Draw DVD Workshop can do for you ...

** Testimonial***

... these simple exercises are very important especially since I never got them when I began drawing. Even just watching I can see the effect it's having on my seeing and feeling the arabesque. I know I've said this before but I think it can't be said enough - over the years I have watched video drawing courses and worked with books and the drawing and seeing methods never seemed to work for me leaving me more frustrated than before but with your courses I can give myself over totally to your method with definite results. This of course, along with better drawing ends up giving me much more pleasure.

Since my last email to you I have begun the exercises and Wow! They are so simple yet the effects are profound! They are having the effect of really producing a deep foundation in a way that no other book or course has done!

I'm having difficulty articulating exactly what I've experienced since I began viewing the course and doing the exercises but I know that not only is this developing my eye to see the arabesque and proportion and increasing my confidence but it's doing something deeper and very far reaching that I know will affect my work. I am not able to put it into words at this moment but you probably know what I'm trying to say. Once again I say thank you!

Carol Ingberman
Iowa USA

Beginning to Draw: the foundation of art
DVD Workshop

Regularly priced at $267 Beginning to Draw is on sale for only $177 for 3 DVDs (that's 6 hours), and 2 CDr's: that is the 70-page Textbook and four supplementary lessons on CDr and the Drawing Drapery Workshop on CDr.

Three ways to order...

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Or order by telephone! Call 1-800-427-2468 toll free.

Or send a check or money order for $177

At Artacademy.com we offer a solid range of fine art training workshops including

Mastering Portrait Drawing

Painting the Figure in Watercolor

Symphonic Composition

Applied Color Theory

Drawing Hands

... and more

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Artacademy.com
93 S. Jackson Street
#23940
Seattle, WA 98104-2818

Call us toll-free at 1-800-427-2468
In Seattle: 206-219-9096