For the past month or so my classes have been focusing quite heavily on drawing the various intricacies of the human face, which is considered by many to be one of the most difficult things to pull off in an artistic sense.
In my mind as an educator, it is important for students to understand how to correctly replicate a human face and understand how different each face can be although there are some similarities that you can see in faces, particularly once one starts to develop wrinkles.
I was kind of surprised when during a recent project I told the students that they could draw a portrait of anyone they wanted and I wasn't very surprised when most of the kids (and some adults) decided to draw a celebrity of some sort. One of our students decided to do a portrait of a friend instead and for some reason I found this very endearing.
I do not know who this is and I didn't press the student when all they said was "she's my friend" so I just kind of left it at that. I do admire the work though and think it is fantastic that given all the options of faces to draw in the world this girl decided to draw someone that she actually knows in her life.
In particular I liked the use of shadows, which is something that can be a very difficult skill to master since there are so many contours on the average person's face. Well done students!
It is important to note that when you are developing these skills for replicating a human face that you don't actually need to be aiming for 100% realism with every drawing that you make. I encourage the opposite actually. We all should be aiming for something that makes our own work unique and I even advise that students embrace their inadequacies in not being able to totally replicate a photo. If we wanted to do that we would just use a photocopier for it. Your "mistakes" might be exactly what makes your work unique so don't fight them! Find a way to incorporate them into all that you do and this "mistake" could be exactly what ends up making your work valuable and interesting!
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