Method for quickly drawing a high quality portrait?

[DrHappy]

I have a character that has 10-20 minutes to draw a portrait of someone from memory. What’s the best method for this? I’m assuming that it would be a pencil drawing. The drawing needs to be detailed enough so that someone else can easily recognize the person in the portrait. The person doing the drawing is reasonably skilled as an artist. I have no art skills, which is why I'm asking. Thank you for any help.

 

[VermillionVenusian]

Artists making sketches of faces for the police come to mind. They primarily use pencil, I believe. So, I would agree with your thought that pencil would be appropriate.

 

[Handley_Page]

A competent artist has often the ability to concentrate on those features which mark out the person (think of a cartoon). So your character can do it reasonably well; sufficient for a Policeman to identify the person represented.

 

[KeithD]

Could be charcoal. That can more easily be smudged out and shadowed than pencil can. A lot of boardwalk artists, given little time to produce, use charcoal.

 

[davion2308]

Pencil

A pencil on white paper is a good way to do it. Depending on how you're creating the scene, you can add some realism by having the artest concentrate on specific aspects of the person, they had really big eyes or a bumpy, crooked nose or hollow cheeks and high cheek bones, etc. They'll spend a bit more time to high light those spots that stand out in their mind's eye.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

If you're looking at the process, you might do worse than checking out rapidfireart.com, which has a video on 'how to draw faces'. More detailed than you probably want to write, but it's clear and easy to follow.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Pencil or charcoal are probably the quickest way to get a likeness in twenty minutes. You need a medium that is fast to get onto a page and manipulate easily, using a combination of line and tone.

 

[Voboy]

Pencil, charcoal, or chalk. Something that smears controllably.

 

[DrHappy]

Thank you for all of the responses so far. TarnishedPenny, thank you for the link. That looks very interesting. I enjoy learning new things while I research stories. I know some kids who are looking for fun activities while they are home from school this summer, and I'm going to share this link with them.

Here is some more background: A guy has a limited amount of time to draw a picture of this woman before his memories of her vanish. He wants to remember what she looks like. He thinks she is important to him, but he knows that he's about to forget everything about her. He has time to draw a portrait and maybe a a unique identifiable intimate body feature or two. I have most of my story mapped out, but I want to make sure that get the details correct for this part.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Thank you for all of the responses so far. TarnishedPenny, thank you for the link. That looks very interesting. I enjoy learning new things while I research stories. I know some kids who are looking for fun activities while they are home from school this summer, and I'm going to share this link with them.

Here is some more background: A guy has a limited amount of time to draw a picture of this woman before his memories of her vanish. He wants to remember what she looks like. He thinks she is important to him, but he knows that he's about to forget everything about her. He has time to draw a portrait and maybe a a unique identifiable intimate body feature or two. I have most of my story mapped out, but I want to make sure that get the details correct for this part.

Nice concept. Agree with the pencil and paper. If you're in a rush, you probably won't have access to a computer with a Wacom tablet for sketching.

 

[Voboy]

Thank you for all of the responses so far. TarnishedPenny, thank you for the link. That looks very interesting. I enjoy learning new things while I research stories. I know some kids who are looking for fun activities while they are home from school this summer, and I'm going to share this link with them.

Here is some more background: A guy has a limited amount of time to draw a picture of this woman before his memories of her vanish. He wants to remember what she looks like. He thinks she is important to him, but he knows that he's about to forget everything about her. He has time to draw a portrait and maybe a a unique identifiable intimate body feature or two. I have most of my story mapped out, but I want to make sure that get the details correct for this part.

Is he an experienced artist? If so, he'll have some sort of medium in which he feels most comfortable; use that. Setting matters, too; is he in his studio, or in his car? He'll have different things available in different places.

This is the sort of thing that is a good opportunity to deepen a character quite a bit. It's good that you're trying to get it right.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Artists increasingly use software to make all of their sketches directly onto a computer or tablet. If the character in your story is a young artist, they may very well have a program that helps them fill in the details of a face accurately within the time frame you describe. It is my understanding that law enforcement sketch artists increasingly use software to produce high-quality "mug shots" very rapidly, and it is easy to disseminate those electronically generated sketches to various law enforcement databases.

 

[DrHappy]

Is he an experienced artist? If so, he'll have some sort of medium in which he feels most comfortable; use that. Setting matters, too; is he in his studio, or in his car? He'll have different things available in different places.

This is the sort of thing that is a good opportunity to deepen a character quite a bit. It's good that you're trying to get it right.

He's a marketing director who happens to be a pretty good artist. He minored in Art in college, and a few of his favorite drawings are framed and hung in his downtown apartment. He wakes up and goes into his spare bedroom which he is using as his office.

This isn't the first time he's had this dream. Was it a dream? It's like he woke up and his wife and soulmate were gone. No trace of her existence can be found. She apparently never existed. It's almost like a Twilight Zone episode. It’s weird, but devastating. The last couple of times it happened, he also had vivid memories of her when he awoke, but his memories quickly faded. This time, he'll make a drawing to remember her by. This time, he also has a tape recorder. He’ll describe his fading memories of their last encounter as he draws. By the end of his drawing, he’s forgotten her again, and he feels like he’s grieving her death. This is just the first chapter or two of the story. There are many developments to come. I try to keep the reader guessing where this is going.

Do serious artists use a table or some type of sturdy easel for pencil drawings? I'm assuming that he's drawing on paper that is much bigger than notebook paper. He's drawing on something that is maybe 16"x20". I’ve seen large tablets of paper that some people use for drawings. Maybe I’ll check out an art supplies website.

 

[lovecraft68]

slicing their finger and using their blood?

Man, I have got to lay off the horror genre.

 

[KeithD]

Maybe it's just me, but for an erotica story, I'd rarely choose sketching something in this scenario by computer over the tactile drawing by hand. It would seem to be losing out on the chance for added intimacy with the story.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

A key word here is 'memory'. Trying to render a memory before it fades is a very cool story concept. Good luck with it.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Do serious artists use a table or some type of sturdy easel for pencil drawings? I'm assuming that he's drawing on paper that is much bigger than notebook paper. He's drawing on something that is maybe 16"x20". I’ve seen large tablets of paper that some people use for drawings. Maybe I’ll check out an art supplies website.

If he's waking up, he needs something to grab and start drawing immediately.

Maybe something like this
https://www.arthousedirect.com.au/Product/surfaces/sketchbooks-and-journals/stillman--birn-alpha-series---wirebound

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

I'm intrigued by the concept and hope you'll post a link when your story is published.

As far as the drawing goes, I think you may be overthinking the methodology. It doesn't sound like you intend for your story to be about the drawing process, so getting too far into the weeds may be a distraction for both you and your reader. I say this as someone who is extraordinarily prone to chasing these sorts of things myself.

When my husband sits down to draw a formal project, you uses a drafting table, which is just an angled table that allows the artist's hand to stay at the same angle whether they are working on the top or the bottom of the drawing. However, if he were trying to capture a memory as the character in your story, I'm pretty sure he would just grab his sketchbook (Just a bound book of blank, art-quality pages, can be any type of binding). He might do his very roughest impressions of the overall face shape on one page before he forgot, and then on the next page, or even beside the smaller rough, he'd do a basic line drawing capturing the things that you really need to look at a model or reference picture to do. (Hair line, jaw line, chin, nose shape, lip shape, eye shape.) I think things like the planes of the face are easier to get right from memory, and they're usually the last things my husband fills in, partly just because they rely largely on shading.

From a story point of view, though, is it a distraction to say more than he did a rushed line drawing in pencil/charcoal, roughing in the shape of the features to capture them the memory faded, and filling in the details for as long as the memory lasted? As a reader, I'm more interested in his mental process - the rush to capture the elusive image - than I am in the mechanics of it.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

If he's waking up, he needs something to grab and start drawing immediately.

Maybe something like this
https://www.arthousedirect.com.au/Product/surfaces/sketchbooks-and-journals/stillman--birn-alpha-series---wirebound

My husband actually does keep something like that on his bedside table, except hardbound. Fortunately, he has yet to wake up sketching strange women. I do sometimes suspect him of amnesia, though.

 

[DrHappy]

Thank you everyone for the additional comments. I’m not planning to get too deep into the weeds on the mechanics of the drawing event. I just want to some details correct in the opening of the story. He gets up, distraught and naked, and immediately enters the room to begin his drawing without getting dressed. His drafting table is always setup in his office, so it’s easy to quickly get started there. The existence of this drawing becomes an important story element, but I won’t say any more.

I’ll post a link her to the story when it gets published here. It’s been on the back burner for a while, but I’m hoping to start it up again. It’s turning out to be very fun to write, like my last one I wrote called Untrusted. Like “Untrusted,” it’s not just a story based on a single idea mixed with sex. It’s more of mystery and adventure. The first chapter seems interesting, and you may have some ideas of where it’s going. But subsequent chapters keep you guessing, but I’ll won’t say anymore

 

[ElectricBlue]

A key word here is 'memory'. Trying to render a memory before it fades is a very cool story concept. Good luck with it.

Having several stories directly about drawing and a whole back catalogue of memory, I agree, it's a great concept - something akin to catching a dream before it's gone, the whole ephemera of forgetting.

That's EB territory, right there .

 

[Rustyoznail]

Thank you everyone for the additional comments. I’m not planning to get too deep into the weeds on the mechanics of the drawing event. I just want to some details correct in the opening of the story. He gets up, distraught and naked, and immediately enters the room to begin his drawing without getting dressed. His drafting table is always setup in his office, so it’s easy to quickly get started there. The existence of this drawing becomes an important story element, but I won’t say any more.

I’ll post a link her to the story when it gets published here. It’s been on the back burner for a while, but I’m hoping to start it up again. It’s turning out to be very fun to write, like my last one I wrote called Untrusted. Like “Untrusted,” it’s not just a story based on a single idea mixed with sex. It’s more of mystery and adventure. The first chapter seems interesting, and you may have some ideas of where it’s going. But subsequent chapters keep you guessing, but I’ll won’t say anymore

It’s got me intrigued. I look forward to seeing it.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Having several stories directly about drawing and a whole back catalogue of memory, I agree, it's a great concept - something akin to catching a dream before it's gone, the whole ephemera of forgetting.

That's EB territory, right there .

Now that would be an interesting psych thesis subject. Do memories last longer when the person lives upside-down or do they go away faster?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Now that would be an interesting psych thesis subject. Do memories last longer when the person lives upside-down or do they go away faster?

My theory is that one's peak experiences are measured in moments and life is the time in between. As you get older, those moments expand into memories which get longer, and the time in between gets shorter. So by the time you die your life is one long memory and there's no time left for living.

I learned that from my mum as she lay dying - oh my goodness that room was crowded: her dad, her granny, my older sister when she was just three and her ears were cold, and Mum couldn't find her hat.

My writing merely makes more space in my room.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

My theory is that one's peak experiences are measured in moments and life is the time in between. As you get older, those moments expand into memories which get longer, and the time in between gets shorter. So by the time you die your life is one long memory and there's no time left for living.

That's beautiful,EB, truly touching.