Last night I attended the D+D portrait drawing class. I've been to life drawing classes before, but never a portrait one! It was a lively crowd of artists who attended and a pretty laid back atmosphere. The instructors we very helpful in their tips on how to draw faces. The models were fun to draw as well.

I'll have to admit I was struggling between wanting to draw cartoons / caricatures and trying to approach it as a realistic study. My internal struggle revealed. I'm going to show what I did last night, and some of what I wish I'd done.

I threw in some of the drawings I'm not particularly fond of too. If you look at the Whoopsie image you can see that was where I really wanted to caricaturize her face, but kept wanting to go back to realism, which made it weird in the end! I tried drawing a cartoon version of her really small so that maybe that would get me out of wanting to draw caricatures. Nothing wrong with caricatures, but I just wanted to pull myself out of my comfort zone.

I show some edits I made over a few of my drawings to make notes of what I should be aware of next time... Things I need to make note of, size ratio of facial features, taking the time to lightly sketch before committing to darker line work / shading, and take my time. The whole reason I attend these classes, workshops, and events is to improve my skills, so it's okay to mess up drawings, and badly might I add, as long as it means I'm learning and growing as an artist.

This experience was a great one and I hope to attend future events! For now I'll be following around my boyfriend and try drawing him while he's working haha.