This is a first of 2 in a series on how to make your portraits stand out and get attention. You'll discover how to create empathy and bring backstory elements to draw people in and keep their attention. Remember, you are the art director and that means you have total control over what your viewers see and to some extent what they experience when looking at your art.

How to Begin Controlling Your Mark Making

A student of mine recently asked about mark making and pencil control when drawing portraits with traditional media.

He says, "can you give me some advice in relation with the pencil grip and arm control? actually I do want to draw with just my arm and shoulder movement. I see that great masters do it that way, but it's pretty difficult. I know it requires practice but can you help me with some trick or something, because I feel that I loose a lot of accuracy and precision.

There's no 'trick' or magic or even a pill for this that'll make it suddenly better.

To start, in the early stages of doing a new motion/skill, even if you've been doing it for a while, everything is kind of random. You are doing it a mix of wrong and right, and you really can't tell when you are in either camp, and, there are a lot of completing movements that are trying to take over, most of which you are not conscious of.

According to Troy Grady, who teaches...