Portraits

I've always shied away from life drawing and portraits. I think all that arms-length pencil measuring put me off. At college in Cornwall we shared a campus with horticultural students, Friday afternoon was life drawing, but I used to sneak off to the green houses to draw the tropical plants. I had to confront my fear of portraits this week, my Wednesday art class wanted to have a go and I like to stay one step ahead of them ! I've had to read up on 'portrait analysis' and come up with a fail safe step by step process of getting from a blank piece of paper to a drawing of a face. It's turned out to be a good example of teaching giving something back to me, after a few practices I found out that portraits are not so scarily difficult after all ! .