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How To Draw A Basic Portrait

Here's a little video to show you how to start a portrait.  These basics are the same for most people.

Practice drawing a few heads this way, changing the directions they are looking,....  Up or down, to one side or the other.  The more you try it, the more each step will become second nature to you, and the better you will get at drawing portraits.

Another idea is to go through magazines (if anyone still buys them?) and copy photographs of faces from them. Alternatively, drag out some family photos (or print some from you phone) and try copying those. 

Remember, they will be practice drawings, so you don't have to show anyone.  You can destroy the ones you don't like and show off the ones that came out good !!   

It is always easier to copy "off the flat" (from a photo) first, before trying a portrait from life.  

You can start to define the likeness of the portrait after about Step 14, by looking carefully at your subject and defining those little subtle points that help to make the person look the way they do.  This is where it gets a bit difficult but if you look carefully, you will get a fairly good likeness. 

Check things like the shape of the nose (length, width, shape of the bulb at the end).  Check the shapes of the eyes, like what direction and distance the top eyelid goes before it curves downward and compare that to the curves of bottom eyelid.  How much of the thickness of the bottom eyelid can you see compared to the top eyelid? 

What is the shape of the lips, are they thick or thin, peaked or straight etc.?  What is the line/shape made when the lips join? 

Also don't shape out every tooth. If you are drawing them, make the gap between each tooth really light in tone, with soft delicate shading on them to indicate that gentle curve on the edge of each tooth.  If you are drawing with graphite pencil, use say, a 2H pencil with the softest of touch to shade these in.  It just has to hint at being teeth.

But, don't add all of the wrinkles.  You can put them in, but make them soft. Too many and too much detail will make a portrait look hard. 

The video clip below is from Andrew Tischler, a New Zealand based almost hyper-realist Artist.  The process follows the Andrew Loomis method.  If you go to YouTube and enter "How to draw heads, Loomis Method" you will find a heap of tutorial videos on it.

It goes fairly quickly so you may have to hit the pause button a lot to do the drawing step and jot down some of your own notes about what each step is.  That's how I did it !!

Okay, enjoy,... 

 

Hopefully, there'll be more to come on here,... !?