Portfolio 1 - McCurry's Portraits

Recently, I read Katherine's "Make your own art!" blog post, which talks about the principles behind creating unique art. One of the first recommendations she made was to create a portfolio view of your work. Inspired by the connections she discovered in her own art in doing that, I thought i would follow that advice.

The first portfolio that I thought i would make is the easiest: Steve McCurry's portraits. Ever since i was little, i have been fascinated by portraiture. Faces have so much to tell! Every crease, blemish and wrinkle has its own story; the slightest muscle movement can convey so much emotion. So when the book "Portraits" came out, I had to have it.

I call the drawings that i do from his book my "lazy drawings". They are the ones i do when i have a need to draw but don't have the energy (or inspiration) to come up with something of my own. I was never good at drawing from my imagination, so references are really important to me. And finding references for an idea I've had can be really excruciating sometimes, if not impossible.

So having a book full of portraits that i will happily draw gives me the equipment i need to just focus on technique. I work on my mark making, on "seeing" shapes rather than what they represent and on capturing the personality, the likeness of the person. I think with time I have become much quicker at these. My latest portraits (the ones in black pen) are a full A4 size as opposed to the tiny ones i did before, and that is why they might seem a lot smoother. That, and the fact that i now use a finer ball point pen. In fact I almost feel like i have lost something because of that... maybe some texture? Some spontaneity?