Every time I try to sketch or paint a human face,it turns out to be a failure.As an example I tried to capture the following portrait of an exotic woman.

It turned out to be a “nightmare”,also recklessly using pastel chalk for the very first time.Hopefully the lady never sees my drawing.

I am eager to learn more of portrait drawing and decided to take some lessons from Corné Akkers,a well known artist who organizes workshops in Voorburg.I will have my first lesson next Saturday.

Here you will find a short bio of Corné.

Biography

Born in 1969 at Nijmegen. Corné’s work can be seen in many countries all over the world. Corné employs a variety of styles that all have one thing in common: the ever search for the light on phenomena and all the shadows and light planes they block in. His favorites in doing so are oil paint, dry pastel and graphite pencil. He states that it’s not the form or the theme that counts but the way planes of certain tonal quality vary and block in the lights. Colours are relatively unimportant and can take on whatever scheme. It’s the tonal quality that is ever present in his work, creating the illusion of depth and mass on a flat 2d-plane. Corné combines figurative work with the search for abstraction because neither in extremo can provide the desired art statement the public expects from an artist. Besides all that, exaggeration and deviation is the standard and results in a typical use of a strong colour scheme and a hugh tonal bandwith, in order to create art that, when the canvas or paper would be torn into pieces, in essence still would be recognizable.

Hopefully I can improve my drawings of human portraits.