A drawing executed to the last detail does not have the power to activate a productive tension between what is to be seen and the aesthetic subconscious of the viewer.

In this sense, a perfectly executed drawing is lifeless, or in other words, in its apparent perfection, it is nothing more than an illusion of reality that will never become true.

Thus, a drawing must first and foremost be a kind of code (like musical notes, for example) that unfolds a neurophysical as well as a bodily reality that is perceived on an aesthetic level by each individual viewer in an individual way. To stay with our example, the viewer is like a musician playing from a score.

For a visual reproduction of what we see in the form of brighter and darker points of reflected light, reproduced on our retinas, photography or film are the only appropriate means.

In conclusion, drawing is not about reproducing what we see as naturalistically as possible (this is more akin to an acrobatic approach to craftsmanship), but about finding the basic grammatical rules of physical formations and using them as a code to be activated neurophysically in the act of drawing as well as in the act of seeing.

What I am saying here applies to all so-called naturalistic subjects in drawing: faces, bodies, animals, plants, landscape, urbanity and everyday objects, as well as to sceneries in which all these subjects are partly or wholly present.

Now we reduce the frame to the subject of faces. The aim of this course is to answer the following question, both in a practical creative way and through poetic and philosophical reflection:

• What is a face?

• What is the grammatical structure of a face?

• How can this grammar be used individually?

• How can we determine the relationship between the grammatical structure that belongs to every face and the specific expression called portrait?

By answering these questions, you will involuntarily gain the ability to draw faces that become the individual expression of a portrait.