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Portrait drawing: a simple approach (Part 1)

by Vincenzo

 

Portrait drawing is one of those drawing skills many people get into drawing for.

 

 

 

It is so appealing and rewarding being able to draw a portrait of a friend, a lover, a kid in a way that makes them happy and you proud of it.

 

But drawing a portrait that captures the resemblance and the "soul" of a subject it is not an easy task and a skill that for many takes year to master and hone.

 

For this reason I am not going to focus this tutorial on the "capturing the soul" part (at least not for now) and I will instead focus on "getting the proportions right" to at least capture the appearance of your subject (this alone will bring you a long way toward becoming a proficient portrait drawer). In this tutorial I'll examine a method to draw portraits that is suitable for drawing from a picture and from a real person posing for you.

 

I do not want to overwhelm you with details and I'd rather prefer moving rapidly to the drawing, making comments and observations along the way.

 

I have chosen the beautiful Michael Pfeiffer as a subject for this portrait drawing and I will be using almost all the way a 2H pencil, just to keep things simple.

 

Lets' get started!

 

michelle Pfeiffer

 

Ok she is quite beautiful, isn't she? Ok try not to get overwhelmed by the challenge and do everything one step at a time. There are many details on this face, let's try to break those detail and forms down to the essential things.

 

Michelle Pfeiffer

 

The first and I repeat the first thing I want you to do is to visualize the face as a big oval and establish three fundamental lines: The eye line first, the mouth line second and the nose line as the third one.

 

This is very important and it is also important that you trace (mentally) these lines in the order I have suggested. The reason is because your eyes might deceive you and drive you to get wrong proportions if you do not follow this rule.

 

Establishing the mouth before the nose helps imposing a downward limit to the extension of the facial features. But do not get distracted and keep going.

 

So you have established these lines? Good! Now draw.

 

portrait drawing

 

Quickly and roughly sketch the shape of the head and the neck and shoulders. That's it, do not do anything else. Now wait a few seconds and look, seriously examine intensely how these few and simple elements look together.

 

 

Go to Part 2 >>

 

 

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