TSJ Portrait Workshop: Mona
Saturday, February 9, 2008 at 8:24PM 
Monagraphite pencil on paper
about 40 hours
My second Ted Seth Jacob workshop just finished it's 4th week (of 6) and I thought I would post what I have been working on. This drawing of Mona was from the first 2 weeks of the class.
Most of the students in this workshop were also in last November/December workshop, so Ted is showing us how the principles he taught us for figure drawing apply to portraiture.
I have to say, portraiture is very very hard. Struggling to get a likeness had reduced me nearly to tears more than once these last few weeks.
Ted always says "you must allow yourself to relax and be open and receive all the information coming into your eyes." I really agree, because I'm finding that forcibly trying to spear a likeness instead just chases it away.
Something about the human face makes us even more critical I think. The ability to recognize a face is hard-wired into our brains, and so we all have a highly developed ability to distinguish faces from one another by minute differences. But seeing the inaccuracies and being able to fix them are not the same thing.
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