No lines, only blurs, smears and fuzzes. No outlines, only edges. No hard edges, only soft edges. Those are the main rules in drawing faces. (side rule – don’t photograph work under the fake colored lights at my drawing table!)
John Singer Sargeant was one of the greatest portrait artists to ever come from the United States. He has been quoted as saying, “A portrait is a picture of a person where the mouth is a little bit wrong”. So, in between teaching drawing classes today, guess what I will be working on?
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April, it was his way of saying that he also had trouble capturing an exact likeness! Why the mouth instead of the eyes or nose or face shape, I’m not exactly sure. When drawing a face, I can be very very slightly off, maybe just the width of a pencil point, and it will look like the guy’s cousin (whether or not he actually has such a cousin!)
A Little bit wrong with mouth?why?
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