Still Drawing Faces

I'm still drawing faces - but most often in my sketchbook rather than on 3x5 index cards.

 some come from imagination and some from the people around me

 above and below are from imagination

these three are people I know

 and miracle of miracles...

I can look at them and recognize who they are

Creative Wisdom/Faces on Friday: doing the work

I've been thinking about my favorite subject again. Why is it that people are afraid of drawing? I say this almost every time I open my mouth in a lecture or class. We have to give ourselves permission to be imperfect. We have to give ourselves time to learn. I think it's crazy that we assume we are not an artist if we can't automatically draw the first time we pick up a pencil. We don't expect a food lover to be a Chef until after they've trained. We don't call someone an author without them first having learned to read and write and compose.

Here I am an artist- and I have to admit that I'm sometimes guilty of it myself. I sketched all the time but was afraid to draw a face because - well - it's HARD! I finally stopped whining about it and decided to 

DO THE WORK! 

The goal was to draw a face a day for a year. I'm not so good at consistency when it comes to things like daily tasks - there is is too much "life" going on at my house. But I did fill the box. And I'm still doing it. I used 3x5 cards instead of sketchbook because they are not "precious." They are kind of junk paper. You can't ruin something if it's already junk right? 

Guess what - it's paying off.  

The time and effort and the work, work, work.  It's paying off.

More than once in the past few weeks I've held up a sketch to show a member of my family and they immediately knew who it was. That's huge progress here. :-)

Mind you - it's by no means effortless. I still have a long way to go but it's such a fun journey to be on. What pleasure to open the box and see how far I've come.

How about you?

For those of you who followed along last year - have you seen the fruits of your efforts?

What is easier now that you've put in some time doing the WORK?

Faces on Friday redux

I don't think I'll ever be quite done learning to draw faces.

I can see that I've come a long way from a year ago.

I don't draw a face every day on an index card any more but I do keep them in my sketchbook. Once a week or so I'll be sitting in a crowd and pull them out and draw several all at once. Every once in a while now I can look at the sketch and recognize the person I was trying to draw. That's progress.

 I also keep working in my sketchbook.

 Some are very quick and rough.

 It's still difficult for me to get the proportions on the upper and lower face to work together.

One step at a time.

So the adventure continues. 

Here is one of the original "Faces on Friday" posts.

Every once in a while it's fun to pull out the stack of cards and compare.

Faces on Friday - not quite the final results

I just got back from a long vacation with the family. I'm going to show you pictures soon whether you want to see them or not.... (giggles.)

 I took my sketchbook but was so busy that the only time I had to sketch was on the drive down and I've got to say I'm a little pleased with my progress.

Mr. Almost Perfect - actually looks like Mr. Almost Perfect!

Mr. Almost Perfect by Lyric Kinard

Self portraits are easier in a regular mirror rather than the little sun visor mirrors on a bumpy road.

But not bad considering. I don't think I'm going to quit the "faces" project. I still want to learn more. And it's fun. And I want to fill my cute little box the rest of the way. I'm not going to pressure myself to post weekly - by halfway through the year that felt like a burden rather than fun. But I'm going to keep drawing faces.

Self Portrait by Lyric Kinard

Have any of you tried it? What have you learned?

Want to keep it up with me?

Faces on Friday

Most of these are drawn from looking at pictures on my monitor - a couple of them I even traced after getting annoyed that I couldn't get placement right. 

Faces on Friday

I'm excited again about drawing faces.

from a photo - freehand

from a photo- freehand

Remember way back when with my "how to draw a face" video tutorial at the beginning of the year? I think I've come a long way with the pics. This is from a photo.

from imagination

These two are from my imagination and scribbled quickly.

I'm just at the beginning of my due diligence. The time you have to put in to "get there."

from imagination

And I'm having fun.

Are you?

Artspark Winter Tutorial Day 3 (and faces on friday)

Today is DAY 3 of ARTSPARK's 

Winter Tutorial Blog Hop

Tracie Lyn Huskamp is offering instructions (and a kit) on how to create this lovely little cardinal ornament. Head here to find it.

And I have bunches more than this - but I'll just show these for now. The faces are coming along - the noses still give me fits. Proportion. Proportion. Proportion.

from life

from life

top left from life, the rest from imagination

(I need to figure out how to use the white balance on my camera, don't I.)

Faces on Friday: missing in action

January Faces

At the beginning of this year I decided it was time to stop whining about how hard it was to draw people. Faces especially. Time to practice what I'm continually preaching and do the work, develop the skill, learn to draw faces. (That first post is here.)

5 second faces, getting barely
a glimpse of the subject

You've gotta start somewhere so I started at the beginning. A face a day on a little 3x5 index card. Mostly it has been fun if I just enjoy the process. If I start worrying about getting it "right" it's no longer fun - it's frustrating.

The almost resemble the subjects!
Progress!

And then for a while the pressure of having to do something and post it every week got to me - it was just too much to deal with on top of some of the family chaos of having five kids home all day over the summer.

Faces on Friday went missing in action.  I didn't stop drawing my faces but I did take a break from feeling that I MUST do them.

Time for a reset. The oldest is off to college (and thriving!) The youngest started kindergarten. I'm slowly adjusting to my new schedule. So here we go again.

The ones on the left - worked over about five minutes.
On the right - very quickly.

And guess what? Maybe taking something of a break can be a good thing. I have enough distance that I can see improvement.  Actual progress.

All the faces so far.

Faces on Friday

Eureka! The top row, left - looks like my husband!!!!

So I'm getting to the point where if I take more than 60 seconds to

do the drawing and use an eraser - I can do it!

Faces of Friday

Faces on Friday

Faces on Friday

Hmm. I still have thing with the lower half of the face being too short.

Something to work on.

Faces on Friday

 Surprise! I actually got these posted on time.

And thought I'd share some of the sketches from a Life Drawing session

I attended two weeks ago as well.

 30 second poses

 1 minute pose

Gesture drawings

(explanation here)

five minute drawings

15 minute drawing

15 minute drawing

30 minute drawing

Faces on Friday (late again)

I think I need to take time and work on a few faces this week instead of scribbling them down super fast.

I'm feeling like I'm going backwards, looking worse.

Ya know, I think I get this feeling halfway through any project or artwork. There always comes a point where I hate the thing I've done. Sometimes I can move forward to a good place. Sometimes I need to back up and rework something. Sometimes it needs to be put away and given a rest for a while. Sometimes it's just ME who needs to be put away and rest for a while.

 

Given a little time and space things look better. These two actually DO look like the people I drew (and apologies for the skewed page.)

Anything worth doing is worth struggling for.  

How do you keep going when you hit that rough spot?