Do you like drawing self-portraits?

Realistic portraits have a beautiful charm, but have you ever wanted to take on a different route and create your original slice of a story based on what inspiring images have to offer? In this course, we will take basic drawing principles and traditional techniques to create our own characters' pencil portraits.

We will learn how to extract what we find most interesting and inspiring in our references. When I say references, I don't mean just photos. References include other artists' styles, childhood memories, other people, and even ourselves.

We will talk about how to create a visual map of what we personally find most interesting and how to translate these interests while creating portraits. Through the study of volume and texture, I will show you how to create the drawing that lies somewhere between a portrait and an illustration.

I organized this course for anyone who likes drawing, sketching, and illustration techniques, and would also like to learn more about figurative representation.

I will start with basic drawing and sketching skills that will help us create interesting textures and lines. And then, we will work our way up to rendering human figures, with a strong focus on manipulating facial features that we see in references to create what we wish to emphasize in our portraits while still retaining volume and expression.

By the end of this course, you will have a firm grasp of drawing basics and materials, how to create a

a visual map of references, how to train your eye into creating believable character portraits that tell a story or expression and find out who and what inspires you, and of course, how to create your character portrait.

As you follow through the creative and experimental exercises, you will learn how to develop your original style of drawing that is unique to the characters you wish to represent and create.