Portraits can be one of the hardest pieces of artwork to get ‘right’.
This is because we all spend a lot of time looking at other people’s faces. We are familiar with the array of shapes and proportions, but is seems to be difficult to put them accurately onto paper without preconceptions.
Closeup of the face on the finished realistic head portrait, drawn in pencil by Peter McClory
Follow my portrait tutorial
Hello. Well, I like your page and I want to learn how to draw portraits. The problem is that I don’t have the proper materials and it’s not easy for me to find them. The reason being is because I’m currently deployed to Iraq and I can’t find this type of stuff here. I was wondering if you can help me find them in a website or something. Thank you!
Hi there! Yes I’ll send you some links tomorrow morning sorry it’s late here – but I’ll get you some info on how to get the right equipment asap.
In the meantime, you can actually use any putty rubbers (kneadable erasers) to begin with… and you really can start working with just standard pencils – they tend to be HB.
In fact, I should really post some quick and easy portrait tutorials so that more people can get stuck in without worrying too much about the materials.
As a sidenote – in the 14th and 15th centuries in Italy – and later – they used stale bread to erase mistakes on ink drawings – as this scratched away the layer of paper that the ink was drawn on.
Can you receive international deliveries where you are? If so, I’ll post some links to art stores that do deliveries.
If not, I suggest you practice sketching from life, without trying to reproduce the ultra-smooth shading in this particular tutorial.
Focus on getting the height and width of the head shape right, and look for the interesting abstract shapes which shadows cast on the face of your portrait model.
Don’t get distracted into drawing too much detail, look at the face as a whole and draw what you actually see, rather that what you think it should look like.
I’m working on my own drawing from a photo of Eva Green. My question is, how long did you spend on your portrait drawing? I’m moving a bit quicker than on a bargue, but I want to make sure I’m not rushing the process.
I can spend as long as 15 – 20 hours on a portrait drawing, depending on the physical size, accuracy and smooth shading (where relevant). If it looks how you want it to then I wouldn’t worry about rushing it. Sometimes If you put too much time into a drawing it can start looking dead – losing the initial vivacity it had in the sketching stages.
I’m currently working on portraits of the Mad Hatter and Red Queen and i wanted to make them look really awsome in color
Is there any tips on how i’d go about doing that and what media would look best?