Drawing Portraits

I always dreamed of drawing portraits. Art school did not teach me so recently, after taking classes in drawing and painting cute little girls faces and angels, and fairies, I started reaching out last year to the pencil and paper, to the picture of someone I thought was fun to draw from. I drew a little boy in a picture with freckles, I drew my grandson and now a year later, I have cut out pictures from magazines and catalogues and am in the process of making a face book from Face2Face by Motley Soul. Then in cutting out pictures, I decided, try it, different faces, and "Don't be afraid if it doesn't look exactly like the person. Just do it". Yes, that is what I said to myself. So last night I drew one girl, and today I did another and tonight maybe a guys face. I figure, if I keep it up, I may get good at it someday. So here above is one of the examples. Oh yes, I see the errors, the nose is not long enough, the girl in the picture is prettier than my drawing, perhaps the shadows are too sharp, but you know what, I did it and am getting over my fear. Yes, artists do have fear.

The drawings are done with a graphite pencil-woodless, and marker paper. The paper is slippery, but not to the degree that the pencil won't leave a mark on it. I am quite surprised about that actually. Michaels has a place in the front of the store with a rolling rack that they sell clearance items for cheap and the marker paper was $3.00 for the pad of paper. It is wonderful drawing the faces on it. The graphite erases beautifully and you can smudge it with your finger to get a soft subtle shadow. The graphite gets really dark on the paper and the paper does not rip or get ruined by erasing.