do you agree what this guy said about artist in general?

!lemon1986 Jul 17, 2012

"anyone who can't draw an accurate portrait of someone can't draw at all!"

I saw a post in a this forum of someone who said something like that, personally I kinda agree with this guy, but I'm more of a cartoonist, I hate portrait because unlike cartoons, it's not really efficient nor time consuming! but you can learn a lot from drawing portraits!

is it nessecary to be good at portraits to be good at anything else? tell me what you think!

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*electrifried Jul 25, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Loool that quote is such BS. Portraits are great sure, and drawing anatomy 'right' definitely takes skill. But you don't need to prove how well you can draw based on how well you can draw a face or a person. The people who appreciate your art do that for you.

=nelchee Jul 25, 2012 Professional General Artist

The correct quote is:
"Until you can draw an accurate portrait of someone, you don't know how to draw.", quoted from here: [link]

Portraits don't have to be time consuming at all. Some great artists I've seen can sketch a portrait in 15 minutes, and it is perfectly alike to the real person they were drawing. That's the point of "knowing how to draw". You can simplify and still get excellent likeness, if you know how to draw.
If you don't, then every portrait, every figure, every backdrop will be very time consuming because you're still struggling, and in the end they won't look like the real thing. And if you can't draw an accurate portrait of a person that exists, how can you ever hope to draw a portrait (super-realistic, comic, doesn't matter) of a person from your mind?

~pauscorpi Jul 24, 2012

I have to say I agree. To me, you are not an acomplished artist if you can;t draw an accurate portrait because failure to do so means you don;t have a full grasp or understanding of the construction of an image. However, I distinguish between being a fuly accomplished artist and a polished craftsmen or nich artist. The way I see it, you can be a perfect cartoonist or, say, colourist or fashion illustrator without being able to draw an accurate portrait. You are good in your field and as long as that is enough, it's all good.

I hope I make sense

=Applejack-uk Jul 24, 2012

What if your medium is something unconventional. This isn't really a black and white issue.

`saintartaud Jul 18, 2012 Professional General Artist

In terms of skill, it's a decent benchmark, but I wouldn't call it the be-all and end-all of artistic ability. I've known a few decent artists who weren't amazing draftspeople, but they made up for it in other ways.

*zeldat Jul 18, 2012 Traditional Artist

I know a lot of artists who have some sort of "portrait exemption," where they think they're doing pretty awesome and are a good artist, but for some reason they "can't" do portraits. I guess it's easier to just say that they "can't" do portraits, like it's some special unique thing that not everyone should be expected to do, rather than admit that they just can't draw all that well. People who can't draw all that well are more likely to struggle with portraits.

~RaccoonLagoon Jul 18, 2012 Student General Artist

I agree that drawing accurate portraits are an important test of skill and/or anatomical understanding, but I too prefer cartoons to portraits. I'm capable of doing an anatomically correct, "proper" portrait, but I just choose not to make that my area of expertise. There are a large amount of artists that are purely hobbyists, and most of them are not likely to give much thought into drawing portraits; they produce art they like because at the end of the day, art is creative expression, "proper" or not (I'm sure there are some exceptions, but generally speaking).

~eeriebus Jul 18, 2012

I definitely agree.

Faces are one of the ultimate tests of drawing because biologically, we recognize a person's face down to the tiniest little variation. That's why we can tell sisters and brothers apart.

On the other hand, a cup that's an inch too tall still looks like a cup.

I think that artists who can't draw faces but appear to draw other subjects well are simply masking their inability to draw well by approaching subjects where errors are less visible. I'm not bashing anyone, of course, but I do believe in what I'm saying.

*zeldat Jul 18, 2012 Traditional Artist

Yes, this. You said it better than I did below.

~StormAndy Jul 18, 2012

Portraits aren't really time consuming and it's an easy subject to test how good are observational skills really are since we see so many faces you can more easily spot the mistakes. I think it's a good test of skill and sort of applies well to the term drawing. If he'd mention art as a whole maybe not but. "Can't draw at all" seems like silly wording though.

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