Often beginners get confused by the sheer amount of techniques they could be practicing. As a result they dabble around and do what they enjoy, which is often what they’re good at.
What is improves your skills much faster though is to identify what your weaknesses are. Then create a short-term practice plan with exercises specifically targeted at those.
This article shows you how to apply this kind of thinking and make your drawing practice more productive. Let’s get right into it:
Identifying your weaknesses
Let’s say you want to get better at portrait drawing.
To do that you first have to ask yourself: What areas of portrait drawing do I struggle with the most?
Is it the construction of the head? Is it drawing the eyes? Is it a limited understanding of the process from start to finish?
Whatever it is – you have to identify it first.
Knowing in detail what technical or conceptual weaknesses you have, will then help you improve them.
Let’s look at a few common struggles that come up in portrait drawing:
- I struggle blocking in the initial shapes of the portrait accurately
- I struggle placing the features accurately
- I don’t know how to draw hair
- I always draw the nose in a way that makes it look flat
- I don’t know how to finish a portrait
- I can’t draw faces that show emotions believably
- My portraits look 2D and my light and shading looks messy
Now if these are your hypothetical weaknesses, the fastest way to get better at portrait drawing would be to focus solely on fixing those issues.
Create exercises targeted at your weaknesses
Once weaknesses are identified it’s important to deal with them head on.
Here’s how you could fix the aforementioned weaknesses with specific exercises:
“I struggle blocking in the initial shapes of the portrait accurately.”
- Do 20 quick sketches of the head. Check out Jeff Watts video on the subject here.
- Then recheck the measurements and take notes of your most common measurement mistakes.
“I struggle with placing the features correctly on the head.”
- Do 5 copies of the Loomis head constructions including feature placement
- Learn the basic head proportion rules
- Check out Loomis’ Drawing the Head and Hands
“I don’t know how to draw hair”
- Find tutorials on how to draw hair and fill the hair of your head quick sketches with texture
“I always draw the nose in a way that makes it look flat”
- Do master studies of noses. For example google Bridgeman noses or find nose references in his book, then copy them
“I don’t know how to finish a portrait”
- Find masters that have a style you like and find start-to-finish portrait drawing videos of them. For example Stephen Baumann’s tutorials really focus on the process from start to finish. Take detailed notes and apply what you learn
“I can’t draw faces that show emotions believably”
- Do anatomical drawings of the facial muscles showing emotions. Find references on the internet or check out Anatomy of Facial Expression.
- Find an artist you admire and copy their portrait drawings that show emotion. I for example enjoy Charles Dana Gibson’s ink drawings.
“My portraits look 2D and my light and shade looks unbelievable”
- Again check out the Loomis construction of the head. Do a few copies. Also study the Asaro head to understand surface planes of the head, which inform your shading
Once you got a list of exercises targeting your weaknesses, it’s time to…
Follow through on the plan & analyze
From here you follow through on the plan and take detailed notes on each drawing you make. Did you improve on what you intended to improve?
In the above example it would make sense to test your improved skills by doing a few portrait drawings, after you practiced all these exercises. That way you can evaluate how your plan worked out, and identify new weaknesses you became aware of. Then wash-rinse repeat.
That’s it – I hope you enjoyed the article. If you are curious about more info on how to learn drawing check out my recent article on the topic. This one gives more of a birds-eye overview of how to approach the subject.
Until next time!
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