After getting some great feedback on my past last week and mulling it over, I decided to start by creating an e-course on drawing the human face. I need a jazzier title for it! I can generate all of the content myself, so there’s no need to deal with copyright, permissions and other issues, and this can become a basic building block in creating a clientele who want what I have to offer.

Here are my notes from Evernote:

1) WHAT is the eCourse all about that you’re inspired to create?

Drawing the human face

2) Out of all the options, WHY are you most excited to create this eCourse?

People who feel an interest in the arts often feel deeply inadequate that they can’t draw, especially the face. Giving them this skill set will improve what they do artistically, and give them a deep sense of mastery and confidence.

3) Describe WHO you are creating this eCourse for.
People who want to be artistic and creative, or want to develop their artistic abilities in depicting humans or expressing emotion. They may be accomplished artists who have never mastered figure or face drawing, or people coming to the arts later in life and find they have the courage now to try this, or that they can’t do the sort of art they want to do without this ability.

4) Describe the TRANSFORMATION or benefits they’ll receive by going through your eCourse.

There’s the clear benefit of learning a new set of skills. Many people internalize their lack of drawing ability, so they feel not not just that they lack this skill in a value-neutral way, but that they are inadequate. Learning how to do this will be very rewarding and enriching for them. It will increase the styles and types of art they can do. Being able to draw or paint the human face can also help people become more empathetic, because it refines their skills of observation.

Drawing is considered a foundational skill for all the arts, as well as design, engineering, film-making, or just being able to tell a story on paper or share ideas. All children draw but most people stop drawing as they get into their teens. Some people believe that the human ability to draw is a survival trait, because it allows us to share what’s in our heads, and the existence of so many pictographs from 30,000 years ago or more shows how long this has been a crucial skill. Many people long to be able to draw or express themselves visually, and this desire is very deep in us. Being able to render a human face so it expresses how you feel or moves someone to feel a certain way is considered by many to be the greatest achievement of an artist, so giving people that skill would be an enormous gift to them. Who knows what they’ll do with it?

5) Using your skills and resources, HOW do you intend to facilitate the ultimate transformation?
I’ll create a series of steps that go into the various components of drawing faces. This will start with how light falls on a sphere so people can understand form, light and shadow; proportions and anatomy; creating facial expressions and the various elements that do that; drawing faces full front, profile and 3/4; the steps of drawing a face in pencil whether that will be the final medium or as a basis for another medium like ink or paint. I may also go into some specific styles of depicting faces, like whimsy art or Manga. No more than 4 or 5 styles, just so people who have specific interests can see how they need to adjust what they’ve learned to get the effect they want. It will help everyone to see the ways different artists approach the face, and how far you can change the realistic proportions and still create a recognizable face with expressions and personality.

This will involve talks, but mainly demonstrations using objects, video of me drawing, photos and video of various faces to illustrate points (I may rope my friends into being models!), as well as written materials to support the lessons.

6) If your eCourse was a person, how would you describe its PERSONALITY or VIBES?

It provides clear direction and opens the door to new worlds of drawing and creativity, in a lively and fun way.