Portrait drawing at snails pace — on precision, calm and portrait likeness

Precision and calm.

Today I gave myself two uninterrupted hours of drawing time to move a little further into my portrait project, which I started this year. The first person I’m portraying is, as you may be able to see, Bob Dylan — a motif full of all kinds of challenges.

There is, of course, the face itself, but also everything around it that helps create the full portrait of a person.

Today I worked very slowly and allowed myself to completely lower the tempo, entering a special kind of drawing state. When I draw for two hours like that, it always surprises me how fully absorbed I’ve been, how quickly the time has passed — and how little I’ve actually drawn. It reminds me how deeply drawing is an inner process as much as an outer one.

In this session, I focused almost exclusively on solving some of the mysteries in the folds of the scarf draped over the shoulder. I also worked on the right eyebrow and refined the nostril. It’s not a great volume of drawing, but each element is incredibly important for creating likeness: the exact angle of the nostril — or rather the two angles — the tilt of the eyebrow, and the way the scarf curves across the shoulder.

In my drawing teaching, I have for many years included exercises where students draw things that are almost “nothing” — for example crumpled paper that you shape yourself in different artistic ways. It’s an exercise that always sparks many reactions, and one that I worked with extensively in my younger days as an aspiring artist. It’s something I still return to from time to time.

And often, you encounter motifs that are actually very similar to these seemingly strange drawing exercises. I couldn’t help thinking about that as I spent more than an hour drawing just a few folds in the scarf on the right side of the portrait.

So here I’m sending a small greeting and a smile to my crumpled-paper days — and to all of you who are currently working diligently through these kinds of exercises in my English drawing course, The Drawing Magic Secrets course.

It all lies in concentration, in calmness, in honesty, in training the eye–hand coordination, in understanding angles, and in all the small realizations that arise while you work. All of it leads to becoming a truly strong draftsman.

I hope you’ve had a chance to draw today.
And as always, I very much look forward to seeing what you’ve been drawing when we meet online.

Have a really good drawing day.