Portraits are easier if you don't focus on the "fine lines"

I feel as though the human face is one of the most difficult things to replicate in art. There are others that would disagree but we are all built different. I think that some people have difficulty with different things and for me, human faces are extremely difficult to do accurately. Most of my students have the same issue so lately we have been trying to shift away from realism and not really focus so much on the various wrinkles and things that truly make a person unique.

The issue at the end of this is that without these things, if you are trying to make a replica of say Keanu Reeves is that it might not end up looking like him in the end since those wrinkles that we all have is what makes us unique looking.

This was the photo that a student chose to paint. I don't know who the person in the picture is but I'm pretty sure it is not a celebrity or I don't know who it is if it is a famous person.

We decided to try to do the picture quickly and we also used our old tried and true method of penciling in an outline first, then going over it with felt tip pen, and then worry about the paint later. This is the same method that we have used on several other projects in the past but mostly those were landscapes and buildinds.

Here is the end result.

I think that this is pretty great actually and the person who this picture is of might actually appreciate some of the "fine lines" not being present in the end. I know that I too would prefer to not have all the wrinkles on my own face represented in a picture of me.

When we did this quickly and told the students to not worry about any wrinkles at all but instead just focus on a quick outline I found that they actually enjoyed the process more this way. Of course some of the results were pretty comical but we just had fun with it anyway. In the end there is no right or wrong way to do art and many of the most famous artists of all time became that way because of the fact that they were a bit different, not in spite of it.

We shouldn't ever do art to become rich and famous because of it, but I suppose if it were to happen that it would be a nice little perk :)