Drawing, for me, is an expression of someone’s emotional condition. Depending on our moods, our masterpieces can have the air of happiness, sadness, boredom, confusion, anger, love, or despair. In drawing, like all forms of art, it is important for everyone to practice, no matter how much skill you have.

I draw people mostly; I find that I can only draw pictures that convey a lot of different emotions, or one particularly strong emotion. It is very important to connect with the person you are drawing. For example, if I were to draw a picture of Arwen crying, I would have to picture myself in her situation and truly connect with who she is and what she was feeling at that time. This is a very hard thing to do, but if you practice it for a while, you should get a pretty good idea of what it is like and you should get pretty good at it.

In this Elijah Wood picture, I saw from the look in his eyes and the position of his hands over his mouth that he was feeling sad, worried, confused, and/or afraid. I tried to imagine his situation, and place myself into it. That may be a little bit hard to understand, so I will explain in better detail.

Take this picture, for example:

You will need to look at it for a while and take in all aspects of the photo. You can see that there are tears in her eyes, which sets the mood to sadness and despair. She is looking up, perhaps to someone in particular, or she might be looking up for inspiration or hope. It helps to write down the emotions you see in the picture. If you already know the situation that the person is in (like here for instance, I am willing to bet you all know that Elrond is telling Arwen her fate if she stays in Middle Earth) then try to put yourself in her situation. Take a few minutes to get into ‘character’ then take another look at the picture. If you are feeling a ‘connection’ between you and the picture, you are ready to start drawing.

Sometimes when it comes to shading: “Less is more and more is less.”