Doing portraits of people's faces can be a very difficult thing to pull off. Many artists will say that it is one of the most difficult things to pull of in art at all. This is why many of the most famous artists will intentionally make faces cartoonish and the most famous painting of all time, the Mona Lisa, is regarded as being as amazing as it is. To me, I find the Mona Lisa to be overrated and is just famous because someone rich determined that it is.
However, I do feel that doing portraits can be a very rewarding experience and is also an opportunity to learn something. The human face is so unique that we actually have technology that can determine who a person is in high speed because every human face is different. Therefore, just because you have mastered doing eyes for example, doesn't mean you are going to be able to do everyone just because you know how to do one part of it.
Recently, I challenged students to do a portrait using an app that will create squares in 1 inch (it can be in metric if you want it to be) increments on the actual photo and this allows students to focus not just on the entire picture, but rather, a very small portion of it at a time.
Here is the original image with the overlay provided by the app. You are then able to zoom in on each portion and there is actually paper that is designed to have 1 inch squares specifically for this purpose. If you can't find that paper, you can always make it yourself using a ruler and a bit of patience.
It is considerably easier to draw a portrait when you only have to focus on one portion of it at a time and then you can zoom in and work on the detail later to whatever degree you determine to be necessary.
The removal of the guidelines at the end can be a bit daunting, so once you have the basic outline in your picture, it is probably important to eliminate them as you go. Once you are satisfied with the outline of each square, you can always go back to put more detail into it because your original photo will still have the digital overlay on it.
While a lot of people would correctly say that this is cheating as far as art as concerned, and I agree with them to a certain extent, it has proven to be one of the most effective teaching methods as far as understanding the human face and its intricacies that I have found in my years of educating young people into the world of art.
Later on, I will explain how you too can get your hands on this free app that does have some annoying ads in it for yourself and maybe you can go ahead and give it a try yourself!
