Photo from http://www.portraitinstitute.com

John Howard Sanden is an American portrait painter member of the famous Portrait Institute, an organization that originally held an annual conference for 5 days on the portrait. From the artist’s website you can see his works, honors received, customers, and other information. It’s interesting to read how the artist has been selected by the staff of the White House to paint the portrait of the 43 rd U.S. President George W. Bush.

Photo from posemaniacs.com

One thing that always amazed me in the art world is the focus artists dedicate to the Figure Nude despite 99% of people around the world are dressed. I read somewhere on the Internet about an artist who complained that in the art academies lot of time is dedicated to the Nude and very little time to the dressed figure.

In this article I start to talk about techniques to make portraits. In particular, I am going to discuss on how to use proportions to make credible portraits. When a professional artist executes a portrait, he has in mind the proportions between the various parts (mouth, nose, eyes and so on) of an ideal model face.