 While there's more to drawing a face than just making a circle and adding two dots for the eyes, our own Cheryl Moore shows us the basics to making a portrait for this week's In Focus. It may seem hard for the average drawer, but believe it or not, anyone can pick up a pencil and sketch their mom, dad, siblings, friends, or even themselves. We're going to figure out how to put it onto a piece of paper and then, yeah, shade it to look like it's real. Diamond Nispel is an art instructor at the Headwater School of Music and Arts. She started drawing portraits at around 11 or 12 years old. She picked up a book from the library and the rest is history. And then I moved forward with drawing lots of portraits for all my teen years. And after I got done with that and got bored of it, I moved on to more things and then learned how to teach. The first thing you'll need for basic portrait drawing is a picture and a grid. Then study the face and make note of their features. Drawing portraits is a great way to get kind of in tune with what reality looks like. So it gives you a good look at the face. You examine what the human face is doing, which is something that's very common to us humans, since we're always looking at people and identifying. So to be able to see the face and see it for what it truly is. The trick is to look at the shapes in the face and not at the face as a whole. Focus on the elements of what a face looks like, the contours, the shading, all of the technique that it takes to get a face down, which will lead back to basic drawing. So it's kind of basic skills in the form of a face. Once you've got the basic shapes on the paper, the trick to shading is going in lightly. So if you make a mistake, it's easy to fix. And of course, like all things, practice makes perfect. So keep going at it and soon you'll be a Picasso. I like people's faces. I think people's faces are really interesting. I think it's interesting how you get to know someone a little bit better through drawing their portrait. You get to find out how they smile a little crooked, how when they're glaring at you, they have that certain wrinkle in their eye. With this week's end focus, Mbemigie, Shraamor, Lakeland News. The deadline to sign up for the portrait class has passed, but next month, Headwaters will host a class on how to birch bark ornaments. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.