Milan Art Institute Mastery Program Review: Week 8 Part 1
While week 7 was all about perspective, week 8 is all about portraits. Portraits are visual representations of individuals, capturing their likeness and often expressing their personality or mood. Typically focusing on the person's face, portraits aim to convey a sense of identity or emotion. Artists use various mediums such as painting, drawing, photography, or sculpture to create portraits. These artistic representations can range from realistic and detailed to abstract and interpretive, reflecting the unique style and vision of the creator. Portraits have been a significant form of artistic expression throughout history, serving as a way to immortalize individuals, commemorate important figures, or simply capture a moment in time.
Portrait Proportions from Various Angles
This exercise is more of a practice warm-up. It is four different faces that I found on Unsplash. A few helpful tips:
Remember the position of the eyes is the in middle of the face. Not too high on the forehead.
The neck typically begins at the bottom of the ears.
The highest point of the eyelid points in the same direction for both eyes.
They came out a little cartoony on this first go around but that’s alright. The point of these is to practice and learn new skills.
The four faces
Drawing a Portrait from Life
I did not have a live model for this one. It’s typically difficult for me when the lessons ask for a live model. So, I do the best I can using reference photos. For this assignment I chose this photo from Unsplash.
For this drawing, instead of starting with a charcoal ground, we sketch in the general proportions with vine charcoal. Then block in dark areas with jumbo willow charcoal. Next, subtract out the highlights and add the darkest values with compressed charcoal.
Charcoal portrait
Working on his ear reminded me of working on Audrey Hepburn’s ear in week 3. It was significantly easier and quicker this time around. I feel this is evidence that all the practice builds on top of each other, which makes me really excited that I’m improving my skills.
