Working on individual body parts in drawing

Making portraits is one of the most difficult things in art and if one masters the craft it becomes very impressive very quick. Most kids and adults can draw some sort of meaningful stick figure, but really getting the details on a face is a very difficult thing to accomplish. I suspect this is why most of the famous artists have foregone realism when doing faces. However, some of the most famous paintings of all time are super realistic looking just think of "Mona Lisa" or "Pearl Earring." These paintings are two of the most sought after in the world because they are extremely realistic.

If a person wants to be able to do realistic portraits, whether it is of a real person or of something fictional, this is a skill that must be worked on for long periods of time. Therefore we have been focusing on this in my classes recently.

While every human eye is slightly different and this is why facial recognition software actually works, there are some similarities from person to person. The same is true for noses and ears and this is why they are the more difficult things to master in art

While I wouldn't say this was the most popular "assignment" in my classes - and I use quotes because everything I do in my classes is optional - some of the students who are truly interested in honing their skills embraced the project and I think we saw some improvement because of it.

The only way you can get better at anything, including art, is to either have some sort of natural skill (which is VERY rare) or to work at it over and over again until it is something that isn't difficult to the person anymore.

Most of what we did simply consisted of looking at something and carefully focusing on copying it but NOT TRACING it. This is why I used a projector at the front and encouraged the students to focus on the fine lines and really notice how even though their own ears, eyes, and mouth are not exactly the same, that all humans have some similarities and they can remember this and use it in their own works later.

Some of the students took took this like a duck to water and I was very impressed with their work. Other students laughed it off and got a real kick out of how silly theirs looked but fear not! If you are one of those people that ends up having a comical look to your attempts at replicating human features you could accidentally be creating a new famous movement on the human face! Some of the most famous artists of all time made a comically unique style of drawing human faces and this "mistake" is the very reason why their work is unique.

While I do encourage students to be capable of doing it both ways if they can only do one, that is fine as well. Embrace your unique art style and run with it. Being the same as everyone else is no fun in art and what you might think is a flaw, could actually end up being what makes what you do something that other people really want to see!