Drawing Lessons Portrait Drawing Painting Lessons

for Beginners Lessons

February 2013

The Beauty of Line

The small Indonesian island of Bali had yet to recover
from the 2004 bombings when the Great Recession further
dampened hopes for a return to the thriving tourist indus-
try that was the economic mainstay for many Balinese.
Bali remains an inexpensive paradise for Westerners but
for the average Baliness daily life presents continual chal-
lenges.

Despite their financial travails the Balinese place a high

value on making art and in many towns and villages there
is an intense display of painting, drawing and sculpture.
The creative impulse is an integral part of community life.

Just outside of the town of Ubud, the art capital of Bali,

located in the interior of the island is a remarkably decrepit
building jam-packed with artists pursuing all manners of
painting. The studios are make-shift, they cobble together their own easels and taborets, and, more
often thannot, their bed-roll for the night is tucked into a corner. Many of the artists live and paint in their
cramped studios. It is called the Art Zoo and is open to anyone willing to climb the rickety stairs.

There is also a studio in the hurly-burly center of Ubud that offers twice weekly life drawing sessions for
the regal sum of 20,000 Rupiah, the Indonesian currency. That works out to two US dollars. Comfort
is not the criteria here. You bring your own gear, grab a pillow to sit on and join the crowd of Balinese
and expatriate artists for three hours of intense life drawing.
Working with sharpened sanguine
conté on a quarter sheet of Fabri-
ano Ingres drawing paper I quickly
established the arabesque of my
Bali laundress.

The Arabesque is the entire outside

shape of the head. After checking
that my overall proportions were
correct I then lightly indicated the
placement of the brow-ridge and
the base of the nose.

When striking the arabesque archi-

tectonically succinct lines proffer a
sense of solid form. What I mean
by this is that I employ short straight
lines to describe rounded shapes.
Keep your initial lines quite light,
my lines shown here are signif-
icantly darker than I would nor-
mally use; the reason for this is so
that you can see what I have done
here.

Almost every beginning, and not

so beginning, artist embarks upon
their art career seeking to draw
and paint objects.

The trained artist knows to look

first for the big shapes. Whether
a portrait or a landscape or still
life, shape is the primary criteria:
shape establishes by its placement
the composition and also the emo-
tional timbre of the work. Elon-
gated shapes generally speak to
melancholy whereas squares and circular shapes bespeak of childlike joy. An emotional tension can
be affected in a drawing or painting by shading square and circular shapes with melancholic overtones.
This, however, is the purview of master artists.

The likeness of a portrait is significantly determined by its overall shape. Many artists refer to this as
the contour. I prefer to use the term arabesque as it also denotes rhythm and the beauty of line.

The tragedy is that most artists cannot accurately strike a shape. Yet this is a skill that is easily acquired.
Spending as little as a single month focused on your arabesque striking skills will set you heads and
shoulders above the vast majority of artists. The first two hours of my Beginning to Draw Workshop
does just this.
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With linear drawing the structure of
forms need to be suggested rather
than fully rendered. Suggesting
form accurately in portrait drawing
requires a solid understanding of
anatomy and facial structure.

True, one can travel a fair distance

without the anatomical knowledge
but there will come a time when
you cannot progress any further
without it.

I lightly sketched in the nose first

(this is the largest facial feature
and its correct placement makes it
much easier to place the eyes and
mouth), followed by the eye sock-
ets (not the eyes! This is impor-
tant), the cheeks and the opening
of the mouth.

When drawing the mature portrait

you need to consider the aging
process of the skull and muscu-
lature. The facial bones contract
and their edges appear sharpened.
The musculature thins (there are
exceptions, of course, with larger
people) and gravity extracts its
toll.

I met a remarkably spry elderly gentleman at the Ubud drawing sessions. Ben [not his real name] was
a widower and former English university professor, and WWII veteran who was amongst the thousands
of very young men who stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944, who had retired to Bali.

His meagre pension allowed him to live adquately in Bali and to pursue his art. He didn’t drive a car,
he rode an antique bicycle that he confidently merged into the chaotic maelstrom of honking scooters
and trucks and errant pedestrians that is the traffic of Ubud. Even more astounding was that to get to
his house in Penestanan, a community of expatriates living amongst the rice paddies, he had to climb
107 steps (I counted them all. Several times.) up a steep incline carrying his bicycle, groceries and art
gear.

Ben was 83 years old and didn’t look a day over 70. If anything Ben was a testament to the benefits of
a mostly pleasant tropical climate and the courage to live his life his way.
My next decision, drawing and
painting is really a series of deci-
sion making – good and, some-
times, bad, is to sketch in the
various folds and twists of the
headdress.

Drapery can be distilled into seven

types of folds, each with their own
distinct characteristics and logic.

Almost everyone travelling to Bali and Indonesia requires a visa. The most common visa is the 30-day
Visa on Arrival which you get at the airport for $25 USD. My preferred mode of travel is a modified Paul
Thoreau (the somewhat testy travel writer) approach. What that means is: travel light. As an artist I have
to make a choice between taking my 1.2 box French easel packed with art materials and clothes.

I opt for the former which can garner a few pointed questions from immigration officials. Clothes wear
out quickly when travelling and I prefer to buy my clothes as I go along. A couple of $3 shirts and $5
short pants . you don’t need socks in Bali . and I’m set and, better still, I don’t stand out as a tourist.

Finding a taxi is never a problem in Bali. Avoiding the constant pleadings from drivers is altogether an
other issue especially for someone like me who prefers to walk everywhere. You take the good with
the bad . $3 taxi rides and $5 one-hour massages balanced against constant sale pitches. There are
massage salons everywhere offering manicures to a good Balinese thumping to ease the stress of a
day of painting. The most popular and cheapest massage salon in Ubud is Eve fs which is just off of
Monkey Forest Road near the Three Monkeys Restaurant (another favorite of mine).
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The stage is now set; the eyes
and mouth can now be accurately
placed. Other elements of the
drawing such as the hair and
money roll that my laundress car-
ries in her ear are added.

I have also made a number of deci-

sions to rework my lines. To soften
the minor folds in the headdress
I lessened the intensity of a few
lines with my kneaded eraser.

Within the facial arena I also slightly

lightened a few lines that I felt
detracted from the overall sense
of three dimensional form. Lighter
lines recede whereas heavier lines
advance.

With practice and experience you

will find that your linear drawing
becomes more fluid and expres-
sive.

Most visitors to Bali stay at the resort hotels at Sanur and Kuta. Sanur is the quieter place and offers a
more auhentic experience than Kuta and its immediate environs.

For my first visit to Bali I obtained a two-month visa and rented a small house in Penestanan which also
came with daily housekeeping. Alas the house didn’t have laundry facilities, barring the bathroom sink,
and I quickly tired of the constant hand washing of my clothes that is required in a hot, humid climate.

A little down the road was a shop that offered laundry services and I quickly become one of their best
customers.

The laundress was an elderly Balinese woman, her name is Made, who not only thoroughly hand-
washed my clothes but also ironed and folded them for only a few thousand rupiah. (One US dollar
equals about 10,000 rupia.) One afternoon, however, my laundry had not dried in time which put me in
a small fix. I travel with a very limited supply of clothing and the logistics of having fresh shirts requires
Now that I have a solid foundation
I can add the flourishing touches
such as the focus of the eyes,
wisps of hair and further elaborate
upon the roll of money that Made
carried in her ear lobe.

The linear drawing can be either

a drawing in and of itself or be
utilized as a preparatory work for
a more sustained work such as a
painting.

Quite often artists will transfer the

preparatory drawing, which is also
called a ‘cartoon’, onto their canvas
or other support by either using
graphite carbon paper or pummac-
ing the back of the drawing with
charcoal dust and then tracing the
drawing onto the painting support.

a delicate sense of timing. There was nothing for me to do but sit down and join my laundress in watch-
ing a boxing match on a static-filled television. It wasn’t long before we cheering on our favorite boxers
and downing a copious, at least for me, amount of Bintang beer which is the local brew. Well my boxer
was knocked out in the ninth round and I was on the hook for a case of Bintang.

Over the course of a few weeks of more boxing matches and far too much Bintang I ventured to ask
Made if she would sit for a portrait and she readily agreed.

Made is representative of Bali’s recent, and regrettably, lost past. On the one hand the tourist industry
provides many Balinese with employment and an income, albeit small, other than agriculture but it
comes at a price. Much of the land that the resorts were built on were stolen or bought by force by the
former Suharto dictatorship from the Balinese.
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The roll of money that Made carries in her ear lobe is a quixotic confluence of an exotic and innocent
past and a modern cash economy. Friendly and apparently guileless and unaffected by numerous
bottles of Bintang Made was an excellent model, I wish the same could be said for me: hot tropical
afternoons, Bintang and betting on losing boxers made it extremely difficult to concentrate on my draw-
ing.

Near the end of my stay in Bali it was while eating my supper at a local Warung (eatery) and watching
a boxing match on the television that was blaring in the corner of the room that I realized I had been
duped out of those cases of Bintang. The boxing matches that Made and I had watched and betted on
were replays that Made had seen several times before.