This portrait drawing was developed using a photograph for reference. 

When I draw, I spend a lot of time looking and analyzing what I see, specifically:

• Shapes
• Planes
• Structure 
• Proportion
• Position of landmarks
• Implied lines (alignments)
• Value (principles of light and dark color relationships)
• Light logic (principles of light and shadow characteristics)

Whether you draw from photographs or from life, the process of observing, thinking and drawing is the same. The goal is to communicate what you’re seeing. Otherwise, why make a drawing?

When you’re learning to draw, or you’re working to improve your skill, if you quickly get into the details of your subject, you can easily lose sight of the whole thing. 

I don’t always begin with the larger gesture and work my way into the structure, planes, and details. Sometimes I begin with one feature, in this case, the closer eye, construct it in a general sense, and then move on to other features. You’ll notice in this clip that I don’t finish the eye and then move on, but move on after I’ve put down a few contour lines to describe the eye. Then I get back to it farther along the road.

When we struggle to make a drawing work, it’s because we’re losing our way in the process. If we don’t have a solid vision — a concept of what we’re drawing, what the end goal is — we can end up with things out of alignment or proportion, or both. Our drawings end up looking flat and stiff, lacking the robust volume of the subject. 

When we focus primarily on details, we can end up with a confusing pile of lines and shapes that don’t work together to depict our subject. Communication always needs to be simple, direct, and clear. Drawing, like all graphic genres, is a form of communication.

Decide at the start what’s most important, and address that first. In this case, I started with the man’s eye, drawn as seen from below. That understanding drove the entire drawing — the subject is viewed at an upward angle. Start with one feature at that angle and everything else must follow. Drawing is a logical activity. 

Linear perspective is involved. The near eye and cheek bone are larger that the far. In this case the head is sitting in a two-point perspective, and we’re looking up at that angle. So I have to take care to carry that foreshortening throughout the drawing.

Drawing has some relationship to driving, walking, running, cycling in that we have to think ahead and anticipate the next move while still making the current one. Where do we go from the end of this line to the start of the next line? Again, drawing requires logic and reason if we want to communicate clearly.

My drawing style is not academic. It’s sketchy. There’s a lot of expression in each line because I’m loose with them. But even if sketchy, I’m concerned with what I’m communicating. To that end I spend a lot of time observing and studying my subject during my drawing process in order to capture object landmarks and relationships. Why? The person I’m drawing is a unique individual, and those proportions, shapes, planes and textures matter.

This video contains no dialogue.