Portraits are Good Drawing Training

I spent some time today working on some portrait sketches. I know -more portraits. But I’ve found that drawing people is the single greatest way of improving your drawing chops. There’s just no room to hide in a portrait. You can generally tell if you’ve positioned an eye too high or low, wether a mouth is crooked in the wrong way. It’s the minute differences that really lead to likeness. So I got through several portrait sketches, trying for different lighting effects and personalities. I really like the way the old-guy-with-the beard one turned out. The second one is a bit more of a “miss” in my book, but it’s ok. I’m gonna try for a few more of these on Wednesday. Tomorrow is game night, and I’m hoping to do a few sketches whilst playing, so tomorrow will be a pencil portrait kinda night.

-ZR