I was a doodler as a kid. My school books were filled to the brim with little ink drawings of eyes, shapes, and squiggles.
That being said, I’ve always said that I’m absolutely rubbish at drawing people. I used to mess up the faces to the point where I always felt like I was being slightly insulting to the person I’m drawing. And so, as I doodled less and less as the years kept coming (and they don’t stop coming), the already low quantity of drawings of people decreased further and further into nothingness.
I floated through space, comfortable, with the idea that as long as I never tried, I’d never do a bad drawing of a person ever again. The classic tale of a lazy perfectionist.
So, as part of ✓ Project Bucket List, I decided to finally break out of that mould. I decided that I’d properly sit down and learn how to draw people. The chance to explore it came about when Lakeside Arts offered a life drawing class. Lakeside Arts is the public arts centre for the University of Nottingham. Every quarter they offer a set of classes that anybody can join, many of which focus on exploring artistic mediums, ranging from print making, painting and even stone carving!
I’ll soapbox this now. I believe that universities must offer more classes for people outside of the academic environment. They have a shit ton of gorgeous space that’s currently costing them billions of revenue per year. Fill this space with people who will pay for it. We want to give you money if you’ll let us.
One sunny Saturday in April, after the blossoms had come, we arrived to find a few familiar faces from other classes. We were ushered into a theatre space, where we were introduced to Julie, our model. To begin with, Julie held a position for 2 minutes, before she moved into a new pose. We were given us just enough time to sketch out the figure in front of us, without getting bogged down by details.
After drawing 4 poses, we were given 1 minute for each pose, creating another 5. We then slowed things down, taking 10 minutes for each pose, followed by a 20 minute pose. Throughout the morning, our teacher for the day, Jane Stockley, explained different techniques, ranging from how to focus on space, to how to hold a pencil to measure proportions.
In the afternoon, we spent a much longer period of time on poses. Jodie sat still for 40 minutes, bless her! This gave us time to properly plot out proportions, then focus on form, then details. The phrase “draw what you see, not what you think you see” was thrown around once or twice, an interesting thought to sit with!
Finally, we were given black card, charcoal and chalk, and invited to try it on a different medium. I adored this. I’ve never done anything like it before and it’s a complete change from pencil drawing. You start with “middle” and move darker and lighter, instead of pencil drawings where you’ll start at light and layer up dark.
Now, it turns out that there actually isn’t a trick to learning to draw people. I’d stuck the whole thing behind this mystical curtain of expertise only accessible to people without facial aphantasia. I realised after the day drawing Julie that we’d all been duped. We’d been tricked. There wasn’t any specific way of going about this. It’s just that we did 15 drawings of the nice lady!
This method of practicing, where you enable yourself to make lots of variations in a short amount of time seems like a great way to learn drawing, and I wonder how that same technique would be applied across other skills.
Now, admittedly, while I’m pretty chuffed with myself. I still don’t feel that confident about drawing faces. And so, armed with my new knowledge of “practicing is a good way to get better at something” – I’m going to be embarking on a face drawing challenge. And in the essence of ✓ Project Bucket List, I’ll be focusing on drawing people who have started their own bucket lists since the start of this one!
I’ll update this’n here article when they’re done!
P.S Kymberley got “Baker of the week” because her picture was the best.