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Some Tips On How To Draw Portraits Of People And Avoid Common Mistakes.
If you are drawing from a subject sitting in front of you, I would recommend sketching in a vertical line to represent the centre of their face - from in between their eyebrows to the middle of their chin - and a vertical line running right under their nose. This will really help you to get the facial structure right as it will give you something to 'measure' against. Alternatively if you are copying from a photo, try drawing a grid of 8 squares over your reference picture, and then draw a corresponding (but larger) grid on the paper you are working from, in faint lines. 2 Tones Once you have sketched in a rough outline of your head and the major features, start looking at the tones you can see. I always start with the darkest tone first - usually the pupil of the eye and maybe a patch of the hair or the nostrils. Having established the darkest tones you will then have something to measure your degree of shading in each area against. 3 Shading those tones Avoid creating the shadow by shading a little with your pencil and then rubbing it in with your finger! This method gives you no real control over how dark you want the particular shaded area to be and also creates a dull and lifeless image. Instead, try hatching lines softly with your pencil and build up the areas of darkness more slowly. You can hatch diagonally, or cross hatch, or hatch in a mixture of directions. What happens with this method is that the minute areas of white paper that are preserved in between the lines will appear to the eye to vibrate against those lines, which will prevent the skin from appearing dull and airbrushed. It will help you to retain the impression of the luminosity of your subject's skin, even in very shadowed areas. 4.Don't over-shade your portrait Less really is more when it comes to drawing faces. At first this seems a little counter-intuitive, but it results in a much more controlled and subtle portrait. Try not to end up with a portrait of a face where only the pupils of the eyes and the teeth are untouched white paper (in fact both the whites of the eyes and the teeth can appear quite shadowed, so look out for this), whereas every inch of the skin is shaded in pencil, to a greater lesser degree. It isn't easy to translate a coloured skin tone that you see on your subject into black and white! But try to resist over shading and leave the brightest parts of the face completely unshaded - about a third to half of the face if you can 5. Learn from history! Take a look at some Victorian pencil portraits, or even earlier, when draughtsmanship was a really rigorous training. You'll see some inspiringly delicate potraits, and all sorts of hatching techniques achieved without any rubbing with the fingers! Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Anna Bregman is an artist specialising in pencil portraits and oil portraits |
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