Something is drawing me to drawing

The weather in western Germany hasn’t been nice during those past weeks, or at least not reliable with some heavy thunderstorms. I have to admit that I like it. I like thunder, lightning, rain. Especially, when I am at home, snugly, with a blanket and some tea.

For ages I wanted to rediscover an old hobby of mine: drawing. When I was at school I often used pencils

 to draw portraits.
I have to say, that I almost never drew from scratch, but copied photographs.

When you draw, everything around you vanishes, you concentrate on the next line, which pencil to use for which part of the portrait, the delicate lines underneath the eye of the person, their nose (always tricky) and their special features. Funnily enough, even when I had the most amazing sitting, drawing for hours and hours, I am never satisfied with the result. Often the portrait looks alright in the beginning and then I start to get impatient and rush over the hair, e.g. You can see it in the one picture I have drawn so far, it is a French actress, I cannot recall the name, but this 1960s portrait of her is so pretty, I love it.

I like the concentration that lies in her whole posture and the melancholy expressed by her eyes.

A tricky thing when you begin to draw a portrait is always proportions. First of all I try to sketch the whole head in very fine lines to decide where the nose has to be, how big it is compared to the mouth, etc. you know what I mean. In the fist picture you can see those lines if you look closely. I loved the drawing of the hands. It was not particularly easy, but the good thing if you are copying black and white portraits is, you just have to draw what is ACTUALLY THERE. Now, that might sound easier, than it is, but it is, in fact, easy. So if you apply line by line, hands appear out of nowhere. It was great fun.

The nose gave me some trouble, I made it too long. The eyes are still a weak point of the portrait and I am still not satisfied by it. Worst part is the hair. I was impatient and it is not easy to draw it, so I rushed over it.

Nonetheless, it was great fun and I hope to have more time for practicing my drawing skills in the next months. (Maybe even the next week, as I am doing a one-woman-travel-experience to Berlin, wohoooo! Tons of people to meet, though, so cross your fingers that I will find some time.)