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Linzie Hunter, whose innovative Spam Art I mentioned in a previous post has contacted me to say that her images are now available to buy as prints - so if you are looking for that elusive Christmas present for your colleague, boss or friendly neighbourhood spammer, your prayers may have been answered. They’re available here. […]

So, yesterday I wrote about cheap ways of getting a life model. One thing I didn’t mention is that there’s one model who will never let you down, never be hard to get hold of and will always be around when you need them - and that is yourself.
So long as you have access to […]

When I was a life model, I earned the princely sum of £6.00 per hour, and I am sure the rate has gone up since then. Some serious artists used to book me to model for them alone; more often I’d be modelling for a class, and my pay would be made up from everyone’s […]

So, you know your hands like… well, like the back of your hand. Only, I’d question the accuracy of that particular idiom, because, when it comes down to it, most of us become completely stuck when it comes to drawing hands, even our own. Many is the perfectly capable life-drawing that is completely ruined by […]

Early this morning I got a head start (heh) on my Draw Anyway post when I snaffled a seat near the back of the bus and started drawing people’s hair. Sitting behind your subject is ideal for this task, for a few reasons:
> They don’t know what you’re doing.
> You can get an unimpeded view […]

 
This is not a picture I am pleased with, nor is it a good likeness, but we were travelling back from a weekend away today, and it’s all I got a chance to draw. Moreover, it was drawn with my daughter’s substandard hard pencil crayons - I throw them out when I happen across […]

I thought I’d have a look at the website of the National Portrait Gallery in London, since I’ve been talking about portraiture all week. And I found this rather nifty introduction to caricature. If you get as far as page 11, you’ll find a fun tool for playing about with photos. Click around though, there’s […]

 
Faces and people seem to be one of those subjects that can get people throwing their pencil down in frustration, perhaps because it’s the thing they most want to draw, and yet one of the hardest subjects to get an immediate grip of.
My advice: just keep on trying. You aren’t going to get any worse.
This […]

No-one wants lines on their face if they can help it… or so those anti-wrinkle cream ads would have you believe.
And yet, when we first learn to draw, as children, we pretty much use only lines for faces. Eyes, noses and mouths look like this:

And as we get older and more clever, we observe, and […]

Click to see full picture.
What I am about to say follows on naturally from my previous two posts about drawing faces (here and here) .
Many people can quite happily doodle a face, so long as there’s no impetus for it to actually look like someone specific. But capturing a likeness is beyond them.
Like most […]