THE ART OF DRAWING Drawing Portraits FACES AND FIGURES GIOVANNI CIVARDI SEARCH PRESS
THE ART OF DRAWING Drawing Portraits FACES AND FIGURES Giovanni Civardi ☒ SEARCH PRESS
INTRODUCTION A portrait is commonly perceived as the representation of a human being's features,whether the face,head and shoulders or the whole body.It has always been an important theme in figurative arts and a favourite with artists,who have found in it,not just a professional human condition in its physicalandom nowadays,as photography has greatly undermined the function of the drawn and painted portrait as the only way to reproduce and hand down for posterity an individuai's physiognomic features. But this 'documentary'aspect was,of course,only one of the features of the artistic portrait. Using my experience as a portrait painter.illustrator and teacher I have tried to simplify and sum up the main problems one usually ss.Some subjects ce,e.g.drawing hands.portraits of children and neads with unusual features have to be dealt with in more detail and are covered in more advanced books. I have divided the short chapters and the accompanying sketches according to a sequence which I have found of practical help in teaching the rudiments of portrait 'technique'.I have found echniques,pr. tical conside lace,composit overall'vicw of the head. These basic technical principles can only direct you in your first experiences and should be seen as suggestions on which to build your own study.Your subsequent artistic development will depend on how committed you are to observation and how regularly you practise drawing.To this purpose,you can,when you approach your first drawings resort to observing drawings done by other artists and taki graphs of subject.Ho r,as soon as ing the utlines of the head, yoromepai friendtosi for you.In the last section of this book I have put together some portrait studies which!have drawn at different times and which give an indication of how to go about tackling different subjects. 3
TOOLS AND TECHNIOUES Pen and black Indian ink on smooth paper n n be achieved using ban cros Pencil (B and 2B)on rough-textured paper
Compressed charcoal on paper chomatie rnmer 文 aacabend 26noardlrspeaiencotouruhiepaselon 、nve5s0 re to avo