remembering faces

#1

Hi!

I am learning to draw and now I started to try drawing faces. I am drawing from Fotos and I think they are becoming better and better.

But now I have a question. Is it posible to draw faces, without seeing it turing drawing? So when you look at the drawing you see immediately who it is? Does someone can do this?

I guess that I will never be able to do it. When I think about a person i know very well (mother, father, girlfriend) I can’t “see” the face. I am not able to tell you, how my mother looks like, without seeing a photo. It’s terrible, but I there is nothing I could do. Well I could keep in mind the characteristics of the face, like big nose or something… But I don’t want to “learn” faces. When I see someone I know immediately who it is.
I thnk this is not normal, or is it? Does someone else has these problems? And what is about drawing faces without photos?

Thanks for your reply!

enape

#2

I can remember peoples faces for a while with quite good detail. There does seem to be a cutoff point of around a year when I cannot fully envisage somebody without being refreshed with a photo or whatever. Maybe your ‘feature memory’ will improve as your drawing skills develop. Learning to draw makes you study the smallest details you would have otherwise looked over. Staring at a bowl of fruit for an hour will make you aware of things you never knew about the colour and texture of oranges! :scream: It’s like when you have studied firure drawing for months you could probably draw a life-like figure from imagination- Your brain has remembered all these subtle details.

…Just keep practising…

#3

Study the anatomical structure of the face. Andrew Loomis devotes an entire chapter or more in “Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth” to facial anatomy, proportions, and even differences between genders and age groups. (But really, any good anatomy book will have what you need.) Once you’re familiar with the anatomy, it’s easier to recall details of a specific person’s face because you have a name for every part. Take note of certain things when looking at a person (for example, a cleft in the mentalis, a protruding frontal eminence, a deep shadow under the zygomatic process, etc.), and you’ll find you already know how to draw them because you know how each part is structured and the ways in which it can vary. In fact, many parts of the face don’t vary much from person to person. Knowing the structure frees you to concentrate on the little details that make a face unique (lips, eyes, nose, etc.) instead of trying to soak everything in all at once. You can usually do a believable job of faking a lot of it.

I should also say that the more you draw from life, the easier it’ll become to recall a specific person’s face. Just practice, practice, practice, like everything else.

#4

There is a portrait painter who paints all his subjects from memory. He gets to know them and does lots of drawings but when he paints the final thing there is no reference. He can paint portraits of himself sleeping and things. Pretty impressive stuff. The logic of it is that the memory of a person brings out their character more than just copying slavishley all the details.

#5

than I will practice, practice, practice. Hopefully it will become better and better.

Yesterday I was able to imagine the face of John F. Kennedy when I read something about him. strange… But It wasn’t complete, and I wouldn’t be able to tell how he looks, just outlines…

#6

I can only vaguely visuallize faces in my head cold-turkey, but if I hear their voice, I get near-total visual recall…

Actually, the really funny thing is that I have a ton of friends in this art class with me, and one of the assignments was a self-portrait in charcoal… Strangely enough, I can recall their faces perfectly as based on their self-portraits and then translated to their real selves.

Y’know, now that I actually sit back and think about it, Gawd my brain must be a weird place…

-eric

#7

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