MAKE••• A No-Look, One-Line Portrait!
Masterpiece in a minute.
No-look, one-line drawings are amazing, because they’re so weird — in the best way possible. This is a great exercise if you:
want to draw but don’t know what to draw;
want to draw but feel like you’re not a draw-er;
are drawing but getting caught up in details and want to shake things up for a quick minute;
are hanging with friend(s) and want to make everyone laugh (and try it themselves);
are feeling introspective and want to give yourself a new perspective on… yourself.
COLLECT
••• paper
••• mirror
••• pencil
Materials are super minimal here, and also flexible: A mirror could be your phone camera in selfie mode or a friend’s face, a pencil could be a pen or crayon or marker or paintbrush or etc.
Use what you’ve got!
Two Types of Portraiture (Both are fun!)
If you’re solo, try a selfie. If you’ve got a patient friend (or friends!), look ‘em in the eye and go for a classic portrait.
1. Situate yourself with your paper down, pen in hand.
2. Look at [yourself in the mirror / your friend]. Relax. Smile!
3. Pay attention to the different parts that make up [your / their] face — ears, eyes, nose, mouth, hair, glasses, accessories, etc — then examine them as a series of (out)lines. How do they connect? Or: Do they connect at all?? What might be the best way to take a single stroke around All the Things?
4. Pick a feature to start with. (If you’re stuck, try the top of [your / their] left ear!)
5. Put pen to paper.
6. Look back at [yourself in the mirror / your friend].
7. Start drawing! Keep drawing! Let your eyes lead the way around [your / their] face, as your pen follows on the page.
8. Don’t pick your pen up, and don’t look down at your work until you feel like you’re back where you started.
9. Look down at what you did! Admire your art!
More! More!
It’s easy to get obsessed with this type of one-line, no-look, zero-presh creative sesh because you can easily zhuzh them up — add color, or patterns — and you can do it with anything. Draw a dog, or a tree, or a bouquet, or the sunset, or a car, or a still life, or a coffee mug, or or or.
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