Step-by-Step Portraits from Simple Shapes

Drawing is a way to express your mind. We all start scribbling at a very young age - the first coherent shapes that a child can draw are circles and squares. This was the motivation behind my style, and each portrait in this book will be built on top of these basic shapes. We will journey through different techniques of sketching, shading and proportions. The aim? To help you draw recognizable portraits from references.I was born in the busy city of Mumbai, India, to a family of artists. My parents are both architects and so was my grandfather - consequently, there was no shortage of art supplies at home. I was three years old the first time my grandfather and I sat down together with a brush and watercolour paints. Watching him whip up a watercolour sketch of a small boat in the water, I was fascinated with how the picture came alive with just a few brush strokes. Shortly thereafter, I started scribbling on any surface I could find. My parents took me to most of the art stores in my city, where I could explore lots of different mediums, from pastel crayons to coloured pencils. They also took me to different art exhibitions around the city. I gravitated towards drawing portraits early on in my life, and remember drawing a live portrait of my grandmother when I was seven years old. My love for portraiture had begun.Portraiture is exciting to me as there is a "likeness" factor involved which demands close attention to proportions, relative feature distances and tonal differences. Have you ever tried to draw a portrait and felt that something was missing? Have you felt that individually, all the facial features look perfectly drawn, but as a complete portrait, something is a little off? By sharing techniques that I learnt along the way and still use, I will try to help you identify the problem and the solution. Making mistakes while drawing, especially when working with proportions, is very common. Learning to be a good self-critic is vital. This book not only includes

Satyajit Sinari (@SinArty77) is a graphite and charcoal artist from California, going by the name of SinArty. Originally based in India, he has been sketching since he was 5 years old. Showcasing his artworks for the past 6 years, he has amassed a combined following of 270,000 on social media . He has trained with a number of accomplished veteran artists in India and has also judged a number of art competitions in India and the US. With over 15 years of experience, he has proficiency in different media like watercolor, acrylics and oils, however, his favorite medium remains the humble graphite pencil due to its simplicity. He is formally trained as an electrical engineer from the University of Michigan and works as a hardware engineer in California. He is also an accomplished tabla player. This is his first book.