14-Day Beginner Series - Portrait and Figure

Hi, I'm Mackenzie Swenson, and welcome back to the 14 Day Beginner Series with Artist Academy. Today and over the next three days as well, we're gonna be looking at different subjects within, you know, the scope of of what you can cover with drawing and painting. Now, I will say this is not an exhaustive list by any means but the four different categories I'm gonna be going over kind of encompass a pretty good segment of what a lot of art is created and focusing on. So today what we're gonna be looking at is, figure drawing and portrait drawing. So really anything that has a human being as a part of it, really, you know, you can definitely get into figure drawing, portrait drawing like on their own, but, you know, just to get kind of a broad strokes idea, we're gonna look at both of them together, 'cause there's a lot of crossover between the two of them. So looking at a portrait or a figure is a very psychologically charged experience. It's probably one of the most common things that people come to art wanting to create, you know whether they have a loved one who they want to be able to create a beautiful art piece of, or if they, you know, are just very compelled by, you know different faces or features or expressions, maybe they wanna do some sort of illustration, there's lots of different reasons people want to learn how to draw either a portrait or you know, the human body. And so I'm just gonna break down for you what some of your options are when you've decided you wanna try to do this thing, and you don't know how to wade through the infinite pool of available information that's out there. So the first thing to consider is do you want to work from photos? Do you wanna work from life? Or do you want to work from imagination? And then a fourth option people don't always consider but I have found to be very important is, do you wanna work from master drawings, right? People who have created beautiful portraits in the past where you can copy what they did which is an excellent learning tool. So a few of the things to think about when you're, you know when you're making this decision is, you know the time that you're gonna be spending, obviously it's a lot more challenging to work from life when someone's moving and breathing, and you know it's hard to get them back into pose, it's time consuming, and then we have, you know, working from photos, which can be really helpful as a beginner, but it definitely has limitations. The things that a photograph captures like we talked about in the first segment aren't always the things that really create a compelling portrait or a compelling figure painting. So, you know, there's definitely pros and cons to that. And then working from imagination can be really fun but it is incredibly challenging if you want to make, you know, something realistic. So, you know, that's, but it can be fun to try that out. And then for master copies, that is actually my strongest recommendation for someone who's just beginning to start an art practice. And the reason for that is because the masters of the past, right? Like these incredible artists, Davinci, Michelangelo, I have you know, Holbein Copy, Rubens, all of these phenomenal artists, they used their powers of perception to, you know, translate what they were seeing and who they were looking at onto a piece of paper. And they were doing it with this artistic curation, this lens, and I've found that really copying and looking at the way that they saw the world, and then attempting to like faithfully recreate that has been really helpful for me then picking up on those things when I see them in real life. So I'm just gonna show you guys couple of master copies that I've done that I have found to be really helpful. So this here is a drawing that I did in pencil charcoal and colored pencil on toned artistic Fabriano paper. And the artist is Holbein and he is really well known for a very specific use of line, the way that he creates these very very calm expressions, super delicate rendering you can see in the features and in the face. And it's also very interesting how he uses very like he only used color in the face and then everything around was much flatter and really didn't have a whole lot of color being used in it. And so he was using that to be able to bring attention into the face. So, but this, I would consider, you know a very linear approach. So then another copy here, is this portrait by Michelangelo. And this in contrast to the Holbein, is very much about tones about value. So if you remember the conversation about drawing and value, kind of being these separate, these tools, right? Holbein would've created this portrait being heavier on drawing and maybe not playing with value as much. Whereas Michelangelo created this portrait with a much stronger emphasis on the big play of these value shapes. So you can kind of see how this whole piece here groups into one big shape. And so those are, you know, two different ways of kind of where to put your focus when you're doing a portrait drawing and within the the process of, you know, doing a master copy, you get to explore a lot of other components as well. So I just want to kind of show you a couple of things that you can also focus on when you're starting to learn portraiture. So it can be helpful to not just have, you know like I'm gonna go in and, and do this portrait of my mom or of, you know, like my friend. It can be really useful to actually take portrait drawing or, you know, figure drawing is very similar here and look at some of the sub components that go into it and then focus on each of those independently. So those things would be studying anatomy and structure and you can do that, you know just within the skull, but you can also, you know study anatomy and structure within the whole figure. Another thing would be doing value studies. So I've got a little value study and we talked a bit about that in our discussion on value, but this is an example of a little, I mean this is maybe a 20 minute sketch that I did in preparation for a larger, more finished painting, but just doing these little, you know, kind of two-tone or or three tone value studies on toned paper can be another way to, you know you don't have to do like a full on finished portrait, but you can just study how those values pattern into your composition. So then another thing that you can look at individually is, you know just the character of the features. So what goes into, you know, the characteristics of an eye, what goes into the characteristics of a nose, a mouth, an ear, and we've got some different videos on those, you know specific features individually. So, you know, breaking those down and just doing ear studies is a really nice way to take this kind of overwhelming subject and just say, let me focus on one little piece of it and you can do the same thing with the figure. So this is a, you know, another example of a study I did for a longer painting and it's not a finished, you know, painting like you can see there's not a lot of detail within each of the shapes, but it was really just exploring how do I fit these big shapes into the frame of my piece. And so this is kind of in color and, you know, larger of course, but a very similar approach to what this is. So one other thing to consider is there are three different uses for, you know a portrait or figure drawing or painting that I do. And one of them is as a study, which we just looked at so is a preparation for a larger piece. The next one would be what's called alla prima. So that just means like quickly direct painting on location you know, kind of a one pass approach. And so a lot of times these are a little bit less detailed a little faster, but they're not as like just blocked into shapes as a study would be. So here I have a little, alla prima portrait that I did and you can see this in comparison to this, you know this is like a standalone piece again, it's not very detailed, but I do get into some more specific moments, defining the eye, defining the ear, adding variety and texture, whereas this is really just a roadmap of shapes for a broader composition. So then the third thing, if we've got studies, alla prima and then actual finished paintings. And so for that, I brought two other examples. And here you can see, this is actually kind of in between in alla prima and a more finished piece, so just in terms of we'll kinda set these so you can sort of see the range these are all a similar size, but they're kind of different stages in the process. And so here, you know this was maybe done in two ish hours. And so it's a pretty quick, pretty quick painting. This one was done in about six hours. So you can see there's more nuance in a lot of the color that's going on here, and the transitions the drawing is a little bit more particular, and then this one, even though it's very small this was a painting I probably spent maybe four days on. And so you can really see how, you know there's just a lot of, a lot more attention to detail it's very refined finished, and so this is like really, you know, a little painting. So that is kind of what I think about when I'm deciding like how much time do I have to work on something. Am I doing it with the idea that it's gonna be, you know, a supplementary work or build toward a longer project? Or is it something I kind of have unlimited time to work on and I can really invest myself in and put a lot into? So one last thing I want to just mention is, you know this also encompasses like figures within a drawing or painting. And so, you know, if you look at here these two images of this is Narcissus by Caravaggio, and then this is a Woman in an Interior by Hammershoi over here. And these are just two other examples of like, you know different master painters using the figure within the context of a painting, right? So it's not an academic nude, it's, you know, really like one, this person is, you know, just like part of a, kind of a narrative piece. And then this is clearly, you know, a known narrative. I would say, this is narrative as well, even though it's far more ambiguous, but the more that you learn about, you know, things like anatomy, how to really look at the value structure of, you know, composing a figure you'll be able to use the human form, use, you know whether it's a portrait or a figure, nude, cloth whatever you wanna do to serve the purpose of a more complete painting. So for today's prompt, it's actually gonna be very similar to the kind of three value project that we we did when we were looking at values. But I want you to find a figure or a portrait painting in history that you absolutely love, and I want you to do or, you know to the best of your ability, something similar to what I did here where you're using your toned paper and something like graphite or charcoal and something, you know the white chalk and just mapping out, you know, what's the overall value structure. And then just, you know think about some of those other elements. Like if, you know, if there's one particular category of these things that speaks to you, you know is the energy of an alla prima portrait something that you feel really, you know, drawn to or are those, you know, longer more studied paintings that, you know have really really minute gradations and are incredibly nuanced. Is that something you wanna explore more? So just really using, you know, doing this exercise but then also starting to get clear on what are the things that you might want to start exploring within the realm of portrait or figurative work. Thanks for joining me today, and I hope you found this exploration of portrait and figure in drawing and painting useful.