Uncomfortable

2022-04-18 17:33

Try asking this over on /r/learnart. In the interest of getting students as much of a chance of getting eyes on their homework and answers to their course-specific questions, we are limiting this subreddit only to posts relating to the Drawabox course. Since Drawabox focuses only on the core fundamentals and does not break into more complex topics such as figure drawing or portraiture, asking this over on a more general subreddit should yield you better results.

That said, I will say this - the term "cheating" is thrown around very loosely and easily, and often where it is not suitable. I've worked as a professional concept artist and illustrator, and I will happily tell you that when you're producing a piece for a purpose, you're playing the role of a professional - and that means that as long as you are staying within the bounds of the law (in terms of copyright infringement, fair use, etc) whatever you can do to yield a better result or in a shorter time frame, is a-okay.

I myself ran into that issue when I had to paint a series of 8 portraits of my grandfather as part of a project to commemorate a year since his passing, and I am not a portrait artist, and didn't have months of practice to throw behind this project without delaying it significantly. So, I used the tools at my disposal to get the job done. I was, of course, clear on how I'd achieved the results, and did not claim credit for anything I did not do. I traced out the major elements of his face in rough terms to capture his likeness, then painted on top of it, and used some light overlaying of the original photo to push areas. Here's a basic breakdown of what I mean. Of course, my past experience in illustration and digital painting certainly helped a ton, but in approaching it this way I was able to lean more on my strengths.

Long story short, do what you can, use the tools at your disposal, and trust that regardless of what you produce, your father will love it.

I do have one other suggestion to offer, though this is the most tenuous of recommendations - both because I am not, as I've previously mentioned, a portrait artist and know little about it, and because this recommendation comes from New Masters Academy, which you probably know by now is sponsoring Drawabox as of this month (hard to miss the big banner across the top of the drawabox website, with its DRAWABOX22 35% coupon code and all). The only reason it's crossed my mind is because you said you have 6 months to prepare.

NMA has a handful of very thoroughly developed courses that target portraiture specifically:

• Portrait Painting for Beginners with Joseph Todorovitch approaches it from, as the title suggests, a beginner's perspective breaking down all of the materials, how to use them, etc. It's a very lengthy course (43 hours of content), so it's chalk full of explanations for every last little thing.

• Drawing the Portrait in the Russian Style with Iliya Mirochnik is more academicc, building upon a previous "Anatomy of the Head & Neck" course, but depending on how much time you have within those 6 months, may provide you a more solid grounding in anatomical understanding (though that isn't strictly required for the kind of portraiture you're going after here).

• The Portrait in Watercolor with Mark Westermoe is another interesting option which uses more accessible, approachable watercolors to explore similar concepts to the first on the list, but is definitely a much shorter course at ~9 hours, but whether that's due to a decrease in thoroughness or simply the fact that watercolor (which definitely have their own quirks and intricacies, and I wouldn't consider them to be "easy") are generally less complex.

One thing to keep in mind is that Drawabox is very much a "long haul" kind of course, looking to teach you skills that will help you more broadly, building a strong foundation upon which to eventually draw your own creations, leveraging reference images only as tools to help pull imagery from your imagination. What you're looking for here is comparably more achievable in a shorter period of time. That doesn't mean it's easy, but you're dealing with much fewer moving parts, with a focus primarily on observation. In a sense Drawabox tries to give students an alternative from the feeling that they're locked into merely copying reference images - but that's exactly what you want here.

But anyway, I digress. I still strongly recommend that you ask this over on /r/learnart - they should be able to point you towards some other options that may be even better.