"I would love to paint portraits, but I cannot draw." I hear this so often, in emails, in my classes, at workshops. It is maybe the most common reason people never try a portrait at all. So let me answer it honestly.
You need a drawing, not drawing skills
Every portrait starts with some kind of drawing on the surface. But nobody said you have to produce that drawing freehand, from memory, like a courtroom artist. A drawing is just a starting point. How it gets onto your surface does not matter for the painting you make on top of it.
In my portrait classes I teach four different ways to get a face onto your surface. All four are used by professional painters. Pick the one that feels comfortable, and change whenever you like.
1. Tracing. Yes, tracing is allowed!
Somewhere along the way we all learned that tracing is cheating. It is not. Artists have used tracing tools for centuries, from the camera obscura to the projector. The drawing is not the artwork. Everything that makes the painting yours happens after the tracing: the colours, the marks, the texture, the mood. If tracing gets you past the fear and into the paint, trace.
2. The grid method
You draw a light grid over your reference photo and the same grid on your surface, then copy what you see square by square. Suddenly you are not drawing "a face", you are drawing small simple shapes, one at a time. It slows you down in a good way. I not often use this method but I know some artist friends who love it and find it very relaxing!
3. Measuring with a scale divider
My favourite tool, and the subject of my most watched video. A scale divider lets you take a measurement from your photo and transfer it to your surface at a larger size, so the proportions stay right without any maths. I filmed it and wrote about it step by step in this post about drawing a portrait with a scale divider.
4. Freehand drawing
And of course you can draw freehand. But here is the secret: freehand drawing is not a gift some people are born with. It is what happens after enough portraits. Every painter who draws faces easily has a pile of crooked ones behind them. Freehand is not the entrance requirement, it is the souvenir you pick up along the way, after a lot of practice!
And sometimes: no drawing at all
In many of my classes we skip the drawing completely. We build a textured, colourful surface first, and then we look for the face that is already hiding in it. A few marks for the eyes, a shadow for the nose, and someone appears. No reference, no likeness to get right, no drawing to be afraid of.
That is the part nobody tells you: a portrait does not have to look like anyone (apart from if you really want to paint someone you know, but that is a whole other story)
It only has to feel like someone.
So, do you need to know how to draw?
No. You need a way to start, and you just met four of them, plus one way that skips the start altogether. What makes your portrait worth looking at is never the accuracy of the drawing. It is the texture, the mood of the painting, the contrast, the marks in the paint, the feeling the portrait gives you..
If you want to try it with me, my Mini Portraits class is a small, friendly place to begin. We paint little faces, we keep them loose, and nobody checks whether they look like anybody.
