Andrew Wyeth: Portrait Drawings

Photograph Dale DiMauro

Last summer when my wife and I were at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, there was an exhibit of Andrew Wyeth drawings. These are the kinds of things you do not see exhibited next to his finished watercolors or egg tempera paintings in a typical gallery setting.

When viewed in the gallery you discover how large some of these drawings actually are. Many are the size of a large painting while others are the size of a typical sketchbook. 

Andrew Wyeth had such precision in his portrait studies yet there are atmospheric qualities conveyed through his pencil. When viewing these portrait drawings I do not see lines conveying the facial features but a range of values depicting the contours of the head. This last statement I find extraordinary.

In essence, to draw the face an artist usually learns the reference points of the head from where the eyes are set in the face to where the nose is placed etc. However, while utilizing these reference points as a general rule he seemed to depict the facial features through the shadows they cast or the source and direction the light conveyed. I come back to this notion again and again when drawing and painting.