Picture That

Intro
Many years ago, back when I took my first steps (I'm still stepping) into the wonderful world of art, I had in my possession an artbook, with a title that roughly translates into this -- "To draw is to see". I didn't quite understand it at the time, being nothing but a young lad, and thought "My eyes work perfectly well, so why am I such a poor artist?" If I had just READ the book, and understood the ESSENCE of the title, instead of just glancing at the drawings in the book, I might have been more skilled as an artist today. Later it turned out not to be such a big mystery after all. As always this is not a step by step tutorial, but rather an overall view on how to approach the wonderful world of drawing. Besides the internet is packed with step by step tutorials already. But enough with the introduction, lets move on.

Picture It
Take a look at the picture on the left. In just a fraction of a second your mind will process and interpret the information of the picture. After just glancing at it you could most likely point out, and recognize the face in the picture amongst thousands of other faces with ease. All by memory. This is because your mind has processed countless of different faces throughout your life, and is able to distinguish between each and every one of them.


As with learning mathematics, it is all about repetition. By doing the same thing over and over again, you become naturally more and more skillful at doing it. But what if I told you to "put away" the picture, and recreate it by memory using a pencil and some paper? How would you cope? Unless you are quite skilled at this already, you'd be in for a hard time. This is because a face is actually quite complex and composed by millions of different elements that makes out the whole. The ways to learn to draw a human face (or any other object) are many, and there is no standard approach to this. One possible approach is described in the section below. Read on.

Reverse It
When you're looking at a face, the interpretation of that particular face happens automatically, you don't give it much deliberate conscious thought. By this I mean that you usually don't consciously analyze the face of the person at which you are looking. You merely look and conclude. If you want to learn to draw faces, or any other object for that matter, you have to reverse this automatic second hand nature perception of things, and give it some conscious thought through analyzing. For instance, look at the nose in the above picture. At first you might think you see everything there is to see, but the more you look the more details will pop out. Color variations, shades, highlights, wrinkles, lines and so on. Look, analyze, look again, think, memorize. Do it over and over again. As I mentioned earlier, it's all about repetition.

Remember back when you first started learning to read and write? Same thing. Letters are nothing but shapes that you have memorized by repetition (and making plenty of mistakes in the process). Letters make out words, words make out sentences, sentences make out segments of text and so on. A face is also composed of different elements, that makes out the whole; eyes , ears, nose, mouth and so on. It is these basic shapes and their relative positions you must learn, to compose a face. All by repetitive study.

The Last Words
What I'm trying to pass along here, is that only a selected few are overly and naturally skilled at drawing and painting. And I often hear people say, "I can't draw!", and it always makes me think "drawing is not something you just can or cannot, it is something you must learn." The vast majority have to study hard to reach the same level of expertise (or getting close to) as those who are exceptionally gifted at drawing, by the hands of nature. In the introduction I mentioned the title of an art book I once had, "To draw is to see" and this is pretty much the essence of this tutorial. Train your eyes to see the many details, that actually makes out any object you might be looking at. And don't be afraid to strain yourself a little, just as you would solving a difficult equation, or any other task which demands concentration. It is much like passing a flight of stairs. You don't jump from step one to twenty in one giant leap, you climb the stairs a step at a time. And don't let setbacks (they will come) knock you out, just keep on going and things will develop just by themselves.

Good Luck!