Turning a Face ......into a Portrait : George McBean

For those new retirees who are considering taking up drawing or painting class for recreation, there is a new world of learning opportunities out there. (While world politics is dominated by America arguing with itself.) One of these opportunities comes in the form of digital art - as a way of learning and improving your technical skill.

So much work goes into every painting that is chosen and hung in an Art gallery these days - it is often naive to think that your first few paintings deserve such space.

One way to get through your hundred hours of sketching and observational skill is to use an iPad. (It takes away the 80% of your time spent preparing a studio and cleaning it up.)

For anyone who is interested in beginning to draw or paint for the first time, then trying to draw portraits is one of the best ways of learning the hand eye coordination necessary for all the painting arts. (The whole world after all is your judge- since it either looks like the person or does not. The audience's eye is keener than with landscapes of still life.) Drawing people around you as often as you can and painting them digitally on your iPad, may not give you the finished product for a gallery- but it will help give you the observational skills you need to improve your understating of shape, form and colour. (and a print that might please people.) It can also give you a passion for painting other subject matter.

Here is how I do much of my portrait painting these days- using Procreate as a drawing and painting tool. (Footnote- from head to toe my oil paintings have improved as a result.)