Portrait Drawing Critique

Drawing by Ann Marie

Hi,

Can you critique my drawing of a statue? This is the best portrait drawing I have done so far, thanks to the Drawing Academy videos. Before I enrolled in this course, I would never draw portraits, it was too hard. This course make drawing portraits a lot easier.

Thanks,
Ann Marie

Feedback from Vladimir London, Drawing Academy tutor

Dear Ann Marie,

Thank you very much for your wonderful portrait drawing.

I really like your artwork; great job. Your drawing looks complete and well-executed, you invested a lot of efforts in constructive drawing and tonal rendering.

There are few things you may keep in mind when drawing classical casts next time.

1. Head proportions

According to the classical cannon, the distance between the line of eyebrows and the base of the nose is equal to the distance from the base of the nose to the bottom edge of the chin. These dimensions are marked below as “A” and “B” respectively. In your drawing, “A” is slightly bigger than “B”, which makes the chin a bit smaller than it should be.

2. Symmetry

You did a great job making sure the head is symmetrical. There’s only one place that could be touched up a bit more – the mouth. The right corner of the mouth looks a bit shorter than the left one, which visually shifts the mouth to one side slightly. This is easy to correct by softening the left corner and touching-up the right one.

3. Eyes

Usually, sculptors do not emphasize eye’s iris when making marble statues and casts; so you don’t have to draw it in such detail. Also, when drawing eyes, it is important to keep a pupil centered in the middle of an iris; even slightest shift is noticeable.

4. Background

Sometimes less is more and you may save some time on rendering every corner of a background. Also, you may vary tonal values, so the background is less uniformed in tone.

Please see some drawings below as an inspiration and example of how other art students do classical busts.