Portrait from Memory

The person I chose to draw is a very good friend of mine, who is a bit older, and she has been known on many occasions to look after me. There have been many jokes about her being like a mother, so I go to her for advise and often for comfort.

 

In my minds eye, the scene I want to replicate, she is laughing. It was Christmas time so she was dressed up, and she is laughing at something someone has said. Her head is thrown back slightly from where she is laughing, and her eyes are almost shut from where she is smiling so much. She has these amazing cheeks that accentuate her smile.

Above are my sketches of the person. This was a really difficult exercise, as I have nothing visual to work from apart from my own memory, which is not very clear over the details because of time. I really admire artists who are able to study a particular moment or person in so much detail and are then able to go away and draw or paint a portrait of that person. I unfortunately am not even close to that stage yet, but I'm aware that this will come with time and practise. I think that I have caught the feel of the person well, but the sketches don't exactly look like the person. The sketches hold some of the key features of the person, but not all of the features that make the person look like they do. I tried to do a few sketches, and parts of their features but honestly, this didn't provide me with much more information to add as detail to their profile.

Converting my sketches into a portrait was relatively easy, but I didn't get the overall detail I would have liked. As to the amount of time that I spent doing preliminary sketches, I probably could have spent more time building and adapting them. Were I to redo the exercise, I would probably have spent more time doing the initial sketches.