Drawing Realistic Faces

HECTOR MENA is a portrait artist and educator who has spent more than fifteen years teaching beginners to draw the human face. He studied fine art and illustration, concentrating in drawing and painting, and trained his eye through years of working from live models, master studies, and portrait commissions in graphite, charcoal, and, more rarely, oil. His teaching career began in community art classrooms and grew into workshops and online courses that have reached students in dozens of countries. What he saw again and again in those classrooms shaped the philosophy at the heart of this book: that most students struggle not from a lack of talent but from a lack of a clear, repeatable process. He believes the ability to draw realistically is a learned skill, no different from reading or playing an instrument, and that anyone willing to practice deliberately can master it.

His portraits have been exhibited in galleries and collected privately, but he is most proud of the moment a student's likeness finally clicks into place. When he is not teaching, he draws portrait commissions, studies the old masters, and searches out new models for sketches. He continues to draw every day, convinced that a drawing habit is the foundation of every technique in this book. HECTOR MENA lives and works in Mexico City, where he writes, paints, and runs drawing workshops for students of every age.