Cara Ord

Mimicry to Mastery: Drawing Portraits from Reference

Hello Marilyn,What beautiful art you have created. Like you have mentioned learning and memorising takes practice and this takes time. The more portraits you explore, the more you will learn and grow. May I recommend including sketching daily in your practice if yo udon already? the first 10 minutes of a portrait is where you grow the most, learning about facial proportion and expression. Taking a small piece of time each day to just sketch faces of all sorts can help you learn your mental mapping for face structure and will help your final product look even more refined. You can use anything or reference, from Pinterest to sketchy and family photos. Your two pieces here are quite good, I like how you remember that the eyes aren't actually white and used tonal shifts to create some body in your faces. I can see you focus mostly on the eyes and the detail trails out the further from these features we get. This is a common style choice, however when practicing I would recommend testing if you choose other focal points to add detail like the mouth, hair or nose and how that impacts your overall art piece.I look forward to seeing more of your art.Keep creating, Cara

<img srcset="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/4f2e94573a324185724814c89698c56f/84da4800.jpg 600w, https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/4f2e94573a324185724814c89698c56f/84da4800.jpg 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 600px, 100vw" src="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/project/4f2e94573a324185724814c89698c56f/84da4800.jpg" loading="lazy" alt="Little Girl - image 1 - student project">Mapping on this picture was easier but I still have a lot to learn and practice into muscle memory.

Little Girl

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