Hey everyone. just curious if it is normal for first time portraits to turn out not looking at all like the person you were drawing?
I have been drawing other things a lot and I really would love to start drawing portraits and so last night I did Betty Edwards lesson and it just didn't turn out. I forever keep understanding what they mean by saying drawing is learning to see. Where might I be going really wrong?

All your comments are welcome! Thanks so much.
Chris

My goodness, yes, of course your first portrait won't be your best. Your second one will be better than your first, and your 20th will be even better! Have a look through my "All Portraits" gallery; if you go back to the very beginning, you'll see a few from the first dozen or so I did, and they're not... up to my current standard

post the portrait hun ...lets have a see .. maybe we can help .

LOL..that is quite funny...your first portrait always makes you wonder exactly what were you looking at..
I still draw things from a photo then when complete i look at it and say, now where the heck did that come from, it doesnt look a thing like the ref! lol

It all gets better over time..lots of time, lots and lots of time..LOL

Just keep practicing and learning, it will all be fine.. oh and make sure you save it..so you can go back to it and smile later.

Make sure to look at your reference and your portrait from all angles, upside down even sideways. Its amazing what jumps out at you. Work with Brenda's eyes and nose lessons some and see if that helps.

Where are you going wrong? Can you figure that part out? Are you working from a ref photo? Are you drawing from a live model? If you are working from a ref photo you have several choices: trace the outline and prominent parts of the face, or use a grid. There are so many tutorials on drawing faces, google it and you will get lots of tips.

Thank you everyone! Well, yes I was drawing from a live model, my 8-year old daughter who was being as still as possible playing club penguin on the computer.

I have done reference photos and have done much better with those. It seems much harder to get some of these lines right from a live model. The photo is a lot friendlier to work with.

I cracked up at my mid-air drawing on a picture plane first with a marker which looked like a fetus. Then my real drawing came out looking like one of the girls from little house on the prairie. lol

Oh Kim I would be horrified to post it. It doesn't even have shading or anything. Maybe I can finish the hair and post it.

Ok good. I will keep it up.

I always think anything I draw or paint is just practice for the next thing I draw or paint. I think most artist are almost never just 100% happy with their work, but they'll be a smudge or a shade, or a line, or something that really looks good and that's enough until the next project. You shouldn't worry about the first attempt at anything, just learn from it and go on to the next attempt. Post a picture of what you did. You might be surprised how other people look at your work.

Well, the important thing about making portraits, in my opinion is not necesarily make them like a photograph, but showing the most characteristic features using your own style, so don't worry if this one didn't come out as you wanted =)

Let's keep the enthusiasm going in a positive light. Thanks!

I feel I must respond to this thread. I've only been drawing portraits since 1957, or about, and I still am never totally satisfied with my results. I see challenges in a photo and seek to do my best to express what I see and feel from the photo. If I was totally satisfied I am confident I have reached my potential and could not improve.

Bobby

Hi Chris,

I know what you mean when you don't understand how to 'see.' You are not alone in that, in fact it is the single thing that prevents most people from being able to draw an incredible likeness right now today. This is an area of study I have been fascinated in for the past twenty years.

I gave up drawing at the age of 14yrs because I couldn't 'see' in the artists eye and my drawing skills had come to a dead-end. I just couldn't draw any better so I believed I just weren't talented enough to draw. Then, eleven years later I contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/M.E and I woke up one morning unable to walk - I just fell out of bed and the world was spinning all around me. I thought I had caught a nasty virus, but unfortunately it was much worse than that, I couldn't walk further than the toilet and back without experiencing complete exhaustion for about three months (which at the time I really didn't like at all, but now I bless this time.) I lost my cognitive abilities (left or logic side of the brain as Betty Edwards explains in her book) so my creative right side woke up. I slowly improved physically but my cognitive abilities took quite some time to improve and while I was mending I began to paint and draw. I could paint almost anything very realistically and like never before.

I was very excited to discover that I could actually draw and paint, and I began to wonder what was so different about me. I read Betty Edwards book which helped me to understand what was happenning. However, i wanted even more information. I discovered that I could 'copy' almost anything but I couldn't make up my own drawings and if there was something wrong with a drawing I had to stare and stare and wait often weeks before I discovered what was wrong with the picture. Everyone would give me different advice and I would change things to suit what they said only to realise it upset the rest of the picture. I needed to learn how to compose and I also needed to learn the theory of light and shade etc. That was when I began to study art.

After eight years of art study, combined with other contemporary teachings about learning to draw that I had discovered along the way, I designed my first art tuition program and began teaching at my local Technical And Further Education College - in July1998. I began teaching people how to draw realistically and the results were very exciting. However, it wasn't until I really fully understood this 'special way of seeing' that people's drawings really started to improve dramatically. At first I was teaching people to just shut their left brain up and so everyone had to be really quiet in the class, I even got them to sign a piece of paper to say they wouldn't talk to one another Lol! How awful you might think, but it worked. Besides they all got to socialise at morning tea time:)

However, I now have a much deeper understanding about this 'special way of seeing'

Alot of people don't realise that learning to see in the special way that is needed to be able to draw realistically comes from the mind. Let me expand upon this; instead of just saying you need to see, I say you need to 'stare and compare.' You have to really annalyse the photograph or real object (reference source) in front of you before you can even make one mark on your page.
When you are comparing you are either comparing; the angle to the sides of your page, the size of the object to other elements in or around the object, the space around the object or what level of dark or light tone it is.

There is a rule I use; the 80/20 rule. Stare and really hold your eyes while you concentrate on the reference source for 80% of the time then dart your eyes back to your own drawing to record the mark. This hold and dart approach is how we achieve a high degree of accuracy with realism drawing. I also strongly believe that anybody can learn to draw a very realistic portrait in a relatively short period of time if they are carefully led through a series of necessary learning steps first. Not only do you need to be able to stare and compare, it also makes the whole process alot easier if you have a good understanding of some basic theory in light and shade principles.

All the best in your quest to learn to draw, I am one of the teachers here on Drawspace if you ever need more help consider enrolling into one or more of my classes. I am here to help:)

Cheers
Cindy

wow ms cyndi, I am sorry to hear of your trouble and so glad that you made a recovery, that really must have been frightening..Thanks for the tip, the stare and compare, i will keep that in mind next time i want to try a portrait

Hi Cindy,
I am glad you were able to "see" the silver lining in your illness. Thank you for taking the time to expound on one of the toughest principles to master. I think I am going to have to save my $ and invest in a class with you in the future.
Trish

Hi, Chris.
Never mind if your first portrait came out not looking exactly as the figure you were trying to draw.
I began drawing just a few weeks ago, and my main purpose is to become able to draw human figures (face and body alike). My first attempts were directed towards my 9 years old daughter and the first try... well, it barely looked human. The next two were "human looking". But I didn't give up (sure, I'm just beggining..), so the other attempt held some resemblance to the real figure, which made me feel very happy indeed, so happy that I decided I could improve even more. Then, in the fifth drawing, voila, it was my daughter! The portrait was good enough to make me feel ashamed to have pretended that the preceding one could look alike her and to give me hope that I may have some small ability to draw.
So, I just would like to tell you some: keep improving by learning from what went wrong in the last try; and then, it's art, not simple photography, so your drawings doesn't have to look exactly the same as the source you're drawing from: some degree of personnal interpretation is bound (and even good, I think) to happen.
Keep going!

Something that is helpful with beginning drawings is not to be overwhelmed by everything, but break the subject down to its basic elements, forms, negative spaces, etc. See these "forms" in relationship to each other, this helps establish points of reference. Additionally, if you are still having a hard time, try gridding your subject and just draw the element in each grid. This helps you overcome what you see vs. what is really there.