Portrait Drawing, Focus On Form

Inspired by a really great Youtube channel today I sat down for a long term portrait drawing from a New Masters Academy photograph.

I continue to find that YouTube is a huge influence in my motivation. If I’m ever lacking in motivation for anything I just watch a video of someone else doing said thing and I instantly become motivated.

I especially love this Youtube channel because the artists doesn’t speed up most of his videos and most of them are hours long. As a fellow artists I want to see every stroke of the brush or pencil and I wish other channels would slow it down also.

I need to know that a good drawing takes much longer than I thought. I need to understand that most of the paintings in museums took days, months or years to complete and in most cases were the last of many consecutive attempts. The information age is wonderful if you want to learn anything about everything. But, unfortunately most of it is commercialized, distilled, edited and chopped into something completely different all in the name of sales, clicks or views. No wonder most people can’t believe what they see or read on the internet, we edited the truth out to support our deficit in attention.

Do me a favor, watch one of those 2 hour long drawings from beginning to end without skipping forward. Feel the time pass at a normal pace. It takes a lot of patience, but I guarantee you’ll gain a bit more respect for the time spent.