At least 20 portraits

I wanted to tell you about how I learned to draw the whole process since  some people have reached me and they were interested to know. 

So when I started out drawing. I did it with an intent to be able to send things to my family. 
I was inspired by a cellmate I had who was very good at drawing, and mind you the only drawing utensils I had were pen and paper. not even a real pen either we are talking just the inside ink tube of a pen with a piece of rubber around it. ya really primitive. that was the environment they were called flex pens. 

At first I made a stick figure look bad. I had no concept for depth. and my shapes were way off. so I spent hours and hours, weeks turned into months and I finally was able to do some basic stuff roses and flowers and skulls. the shading were hard for me to figure out and with an ink pen it is no small task. I put a lot of hours into it I started to practice for 4 5 sometimes even 6 hours a day until i had confidence and was able to really put down something that i liked a lot; by the time that I got to a place were I was able to buy art supplies I got into doing pencil work charcoal and still ink pen because it is so crisp and clean i like it a lot. then i started to mess around with portraits a bit because it was something that I always wanted to do. 

When I first started with portraits I sucked at it, my eyes were crossed and my proportions off. It was much harder than I had thought it would be. I really didn't have much help, I got a few pointers long the way, however the guys that I knew only a couple that are very good at them would hold tight to there secrets; I got a couple of books and little by little figured it out, I spent a good six months working on eyes to really make them the focus and I think that they are what really draws a person in and is the focus and what brings the life into the picture. Don't get me wrong the other features also are very important but the eyes are the key; Once I got it down, i started to do a lot of portraits and I  spent a few years doing nothing but portraits, I could say that I have done hundreds of them by now. each one is different presenting challenges of there own, as we are all unique in our own way. 

I strive to deliver a better piece of art each time, to breath life into the paper, creativity is such a wonderful thing. Doing portraits takes so much patience and hours. 

Recently I was giving somebody some art lessons and they just want to know the magic formula to get how to do them like I do. He thought that it looked so easy and then when he gets down to actually implementing the stages and steps of the drawing it is seen in a whole different light,  as I was able to do things with precision and work the led around the paper he just could not. I told him what I tell everybody:  it takes hours and hours of practice and  it will take you at least 20 portraits just to figure it out, 50 to really get good,  hundred and you will know what you are doing. 


By now I understand the dynamics and fundamentals and  I would consider myself an expert, but I have put the hours in. they say that it takes 10,000 hours to master something and I am close to that; I would say that roughly 15-20 hours per portrait but that also depends on how big it is, personally for me the bigger the better, you can achieve more detail and realistic image if you go big. however it definitely takes more hours. 

When working on a portrait generally i will do the layout of the features first, a sketch outline, then I start with the eyes and shade those in, then the nose down to the mouth. then go around to the cheeks the jaw and chin, then up to the forehead, hair and after that I go back and refine the areas darken then shadow and use my eraser to highlight the light spots, and then move down to the close and rest of the pic and background. 

It takes a lot of time and focus to get these portraits done with accuracy, not to mention all the years of drawing practicing training the eye and hand to work together to create realism from nothing. 

Thank you for listening to my story and maybe this can give you some more insight into how i learned how to draw and what goes into it, as a lot of people think that it is something that just comes so easily.