How to Draw a Renaissance Portrait
Hello my dear friends, my name is Ksenia and this video is a glimpse into the beautiful past.
I will show you the process of creating a renaissance portrait drawing.
First I need to prepare the paper. I gently tinted with cold black tea to create the look
of old noble paper and I let it dry in the rays of sun. And now the surface is prepared
and we can begin our drawing. I'm gonna use this dark sanguine pencil and we start by
sketching the silhouette and main face features. I'm drawing a portrait of my mother. She has
this delicate wonderful renaissance beauty and this golden Botticelli curls. They will soon
appear here on the paper too. By the way we have quite similar face features and hairstyle which
is not very surprising because she's my mother. So if someone suddenly thought that this is a
self-portrait it's not. And so I try to work very gently and softly because the drawing
of the period of art are distinguished by the sophistication and beauty of every hatch.
That's why I press very lightly on the pencil and blend a little with my fingertip.
At some point this drawing started to remind me of a water house. In general my mother has this
really amazing appearance that combines all the beauty of the renaissance and the following eras
of art and I just couldn't help drawing her. And finally I move on to her hair. I need to
create a slight illusion of volume and show its golden shine and all those precious curls.
My back usually gets very tired from drawing but fortunately we're close to finishing.
Sometimes final touches is the best part of the entire process of drawing. At some point it feels
like a meditation because the hardest part is over and now you just add some hatches to make
it look perfect. Sometimes I look in books at how a wiser and more experienced artist has handled
a particular task and this is usually very useful. Sometimes you doubt how to best draw something
but people who lived many centuries before you already know the answers and whisper them to you
from these pages. I recently read Leonardo da Vinci's treatise on painting or Trattato della
pittura in italian. Forgive me my italian viewers, I'm just learning this language.
And so I was amazed at how detailed he describes drawing and painting literally anything.
Some specific weather, lighting, the human figure, even three branches. It's amazing that we live in
the same world where such people once lived and left us this priceless legacy. At the academy of
arts where I study they say that you have to learn from the best and that's true so we devote a very
important part of our training to copying drawings by old masters. Recently I went home to Moscow
for the holidays and learned that the Tretikov gallery was hosting an exhibition of drawings by
one of the best russian artists Alexander Ivanov. So I took a lot of great photos of his drawings
for you guys to study and copy and made a big album with a bunch of close-up photos of each
fragment of his drawings so that you can really get to know his technique. The album is posted
on my boosty, it's analog of patreon, the link is below and here are a couple of fragments from it
so you can see what a great master he is. Copying the works of old masters is an important part of
art education as it allows you to quickly adapt their techniques and apply them in your future
artworks. And this is what we got as a result, a very gently portrait, not overloaded with material,
light shading, maximum information with minimum of material. And at the end of this video I wanted
to say words of gratitude to my wonderful community. I see all your kind words in the
comments and I'm very happy when my content is useful for you. By the way we also have a telegram
channel where I post some useful and interesting things and you can communicate with fellow artists,
get advice or words of support. Unfortunately Instagram is working very badly in my country now
so if it stops working completely you can always find me there and keep in touch. So thank you guys
for watching and join our community and stay creative!