Drawing Through the Snow: Teaching Beauty, Proportion, and Portraits from Home

Drawing Through the Snow: Teaching Beauty, Proportion, and Portraits from Home

On snowy days, life here comes to a complete stop.
Schools close, and the roads are occupied only by snowplows moving steadily back and forth. Once the snow eases, we step outside with shovels to clear our driveways and sidewalks.

When I first came to the United States, I often wondered why houses were so large.
I thought smaller, more compact homes—like apartment living in Korea—might be more efficient.

After several winters, however, I understood the reason.
When it snows, we are confined indoors. We stock up on emergency food and prepare for what feels like a small survival game. Homes need space—enough room to walk around and stay active, and enough people inside to help each other endure long hours of isolation without boredom.

After years of these semi-forced winters indoors, you begin to develop your own strategies.
The question becomes: how can we endure this quiet, restricted time in a way that is enjoyable and meaningful?
This winter, my classes transitioned online, and I have been spending my days teaching students from home and preparing lessons. Even now, snow still blankets the outdoors, and the air remains bitterly cold—but as I focus on building effective lessons, time seems to disappear.

One unexpected advantage of online teaching is the ability to communicate details that are often difficult to show in an in-person classroom. For this reason, I intentionally simplified my materials. I wanted students to be able to follow along easily, using only what they already had at home.

Pencil drawing turned out to be the perfect medium.
With just an A4 sheet of paper, a pencil, an eraser, and a paper towel for blending, anyone can create a compelling drawing. The simplicity of these tools allows students to focus not on materials, but on observation and technique.
Another discovery emerged through these online lessons: they provide an excellent opportunity to teach proportion—the foundation of beauty in visual art. Portrait drawing, in particular, makes this concept clear.

Most people have experienced the frustration of trying to draw a portrait—especially of a famous person—only to find that something feels off. Even when the drawing looks accurate, it somehow lacks the intended likeness. Facial proportion, angles, and the placement of shadows vary subtly from person to person, and those small differences define individuality.

Portrait drawing trains the eye to observe carefully. It is not about copying a face, but about understanding it.
As I prepared my next lesson, I decided to introduce a more challenging concept: proportion. While it is not an easy topic, mastering it dramatically improves the quality of one’s drawings.

For this lesson, I chose Audrey Hepburn as my subject.
I have always enjoyed drawing her face—not because it is conventionally perfect, but because its imperfections create remarkable harmony. Her beauty cannot be reduced to symmetry or ideal ratios. Even modern cosmetic surgery would struggle to replicate the elegance and charm she possessed naturally.
This led me to a new question: how can beginners learn to draw such a face accurately and with confidence?

That question became the foundation of this new lesson.
Rather than simply copying an image, students learn how to analyze proportion and observe relationships within the face—learning how a portrait becomes convincing, not just recognizable.
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I hope this online class becomes a meaningful experience for my students.
Even as snow freezes the world outside, we continue to learn, to draw, and to explore what beauty truly means—quietly, from inside our homes.