How to Draw Martin Luther King Jr.

If you're putting together a flyer, a poster, a lesson plan or an article about Martin Luther King, Jr. for Martin Luther King Jr. day, you may need a copyright-free image of this famous historical figure. While many photos are available online and in books, the copyright belongs to other people. By creating your own artwork, you can reproduce it, make prints, sell copies to fund your tribute and do anything you like with it to perpetuate the memory of this great man.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Graphite pencil
• Black or brown fine or extra fine point felt tip pen
• Good acid free drawing paper, check pad or sketchbook for "acid free."
• Kneaded eraser
• White vinyl eraser or stick eraser
• Internet access or library card
• Workable matte fixative
• Tracing paper
• Artist's low tack tape or masking tape
• Optional transfer paper

1. 
   Some typical face shapes including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's face shape.

   Find and compare several good photo references online. If you aren't already good at drawing portraits, copy a variety of them into your computer and print them out or make copies at the library of several images. Study these images in detail, try to find high resolution images to work from. You can't copy any of them exactly without violating copyright, so the trick to legally drawing from photo references is to change the reference. Combining multiple references is a good way to accomplish this. Look for a good face photo with an expression that won't be that hard to draw.
   
   Let's start with basic head shape. Compare your photos of Dr. King with these head shape sketches, if you use this article to do portraits of other celebrities, some of them will fit those better. Features are sketched for placement, and on Dr. King's head shape, I've added the mustache -- with that, it almost looks like a cartoon of him already.

2. 
   Scan with tick marks on an overlay of Martin Luther King Jr. sketch

   The next step is to block in your sketch lightly. Enlarge Dr. King's head shape on another piece of drawing paper, so that it takes up about 2/3 of the paper. Place the top of the head some distance from the edge, half an inch if it's a small sketchbook, at least a full inch or two if it's a larger sketchbook.
   
   There is a natural tendency for artists to flatten the tops of heads on drawings, skipping the forehead, to make eyes larger than the other features and mouths larger or smaller than the other features, and minimize noses or do them too large. Some of this is instinct we need to overcome to learn to draw realistically. People react emotionally to eyes and mouths for social cues, even babies respond to eye spots and a mouth line. But foreheads don't trigger this instinct, so until anyone learns realism, foreheads, noses and cheeks sometimes disappear compared to the powerful emotional features of eyes, eyebrows and mouths.
   
   Getting the proportions accurate is important for recognition. It may help to use a ruler and measure the photo reference by some small unit, like eighths of an inch, and scale it up with tick marks on the paper by marking the same number of large units, like half inches or inches. My photo of Dr. King is a hair over 6/8" tall and 4/8" wide, so I'm going to sketch his head 3 1/8" tall (six half inches and the smidge becomes an eighth of an inch) and 2" wide (four half inches wide).
   
   Tick marks are a little easier than using the grid method to scale and transfer a photo reference to the page, also they allow a little more creativity in changing expression than exactly following the photo. I use tick marks at top and bottom of the face, at the corners of the mouth, at the center and sides of the nose, and at the inside and outside corners of the eyes. I measure from the same points on the face, usually measuring from the center of the top of the head to know how far down to place a feature and from one side to place it horizontally.
   
   This illustration shows my tick marks done in red ink on tracing paper over a loose sketch of Dr. King done in pencil. Do not do your tick marks in ink, that's just to show you where I place them. My real tick marks vanished under the sketch as I worked them into the lines. Pay attention while you do this to the shape of his features. His mouth has lines that meet at the sides even though it's slightly open, and his teeth show but not much. His eyes slant a little down at the corners.

3. 
   Pencil portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with shading

   Lightly sketch in the outlines of his features as I've done here. Use a light pencil first, with an H range number, drawing lightly, then as you get it right, darken it with an HB (No. 2 normal) pencil or a soft B range pencil. F is Fine and between HB and H, a little harder than regular pencils. B, 2B, 3B all get darker and more smudgy the higher the number. I did the light lines on the previous sketch with a 4H pencil, so they barely showed, but I am shading this sketch with a 6B pencil so that it's easily seen on a scan.
   
   First do all the darkest areas, trying to get them accurate as dark shapes, like the edge of his eye, the iris of his eye, his eyebrows, mustache, edges of ears and hair, then start smudging in the medium and light shadows with your fingers to spread the graphite. When it gets too dark in a highlight area, shape it with your kneaded eraser by pressing and lifting, or erase all the way to white. Refine the shape of the head as you go, constantly comparing with your photo reference.
   
   If you got the mouth a little wider or narrower, it may still have the resemblance. Judge this by looking at the other photos. Expression shows in the shading that rounds the face and makes it three dimensional. This is actually a lot easier on a black person, because the highlights will be very distinct and when the shading is continued over the entire drawing area, the skin tone will look reasonably accurate.
   
   Take your time with this stage. Look closely at the eyes in your photo references and be sure to get the eye shape accurate. This shows both identity and expression. Smudge thoroughly and then lift out highlights with your kneaded eraser or stick eraser -- with the white vinyl stick eraser you can almost draw in erasing.
   
   Sketch in suit lapels, tie and shirt collar loosely, save most of the detail and shading for Dr. King's face. Spray with workable matte fixative if you want to keep and use this version, this could be the final step if you like pencil drawings for your purpose.

4. 
   Tracing of pencil drawing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

   Depending on how you're going to use this portrait, you may want to do it in ink rather than pencil. For flyers it often looks better to have an ink sketch with crosshatching, also for some other printed purposes. It depends on the resolution of your printer, but crosshatched ink drawings turn out better on normal copiers even at later generations when copies are copied.
   
   So let's ink this portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King now using a brush pen, where some lines are a little thicker or thinner depending on how hard you press. Also, using a brown ink pen to do his portrait allows a nice look like an old time photo. If you're doing an ink version, you can do a lighter sketch to start, or just trace the basic lines and do all your shading in ink.
   
   I'm going to trace and transfer, the image for this step is a tracing of just the main lines of my previous pencil portrait of Dr. King. Because we drew him first in pencil, it's going to be easier to find and remember the shading details to draw him in crosshatching.

5. 
   Traced image ready for inking

   To transfer your pencil outlines, turn your tracing over and put it on the backboard of your drawing pad or something else that you don't mind getting marks on. Using a blunt soft pencil, mine is a very soft 6B pencil, scribble over each of the lines with a wider line. This is to put graphite on the back of the tracing. You can also skip this by getting transfer paper and sliding it under your tracing.
   
   Tape the tracing onto a new piece of drawing paper right side up to transfer your tracing and make a light sketch for your ink portrait. Go over each line again carefully with a sharp, hard pencil or a ballpoint pen, and you will transfer the tracing perfectly. You can use a dried out ballpoint, a stylus or anything with a reasonably sharp point to transfer it, as long as it's sharp enough to get the tracing onto your paper for the ink drawing.

6. 
   Line drawing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with eyebrows and mustache shaded

   Start by shading in all the darkest areas first, just the way we did with the pencil drawing. They don't need to be shaded to their darkest level yet, but putting in a layer of fine hatching where all the darks are will help establish that they are the darkest darks.
   
   Ink the traced lines and then clean all the pencil off of your first stage ink drawing. Use the inking to correct any errors or shaky lines that happened in the transfer stage.
   
   Erase all of your pencil lines from the transferred sketch. If you forgot to ink a line, like the side of his shirt collar (I did), this will catch it and you can put that line in by looking back at the tracing for where it goes. Wash your hands, get rid of all that smudgy graphite. From here on out, we're using clean penwork.
   
   If you have a thicker pen line or you like the look of a line drawing, you can stop at this stage and use it as is. Several of these stages are drawing styles in their own right. Continue, and we'll have a shaded crosshatched drawing very much like old time newspaper illustrations, the sort artists did before cameras were invented.

7. 
   Hair finished, first layer of shading on face, tie and suit.

   Darken the hair with tiny overlapping spirals, row after row of them, till it blurs into a hair texture. Follow the hairline closely. Darken the mustache with several layers of crosshatching and correct the shape if it's off. At each stage I keep looking at my reference and making minor changes to what I'm doing to get closer to the likeness.
   
   Do one layer of hatching over all the shadow areas on the face, whether light or dark. More layers will be added in later. This version is too light to use, but with more layers it'll start getting depth and realism.
   
   Shade the eyes with one layer of hatching, leaving in a small "catchlight" on the iris off to one side (the right) and then draw in the pupils of the eyes solidly, going around the catchlight. Eye highlights establish that the eye is glossy and makes eyes come to life in any drawing. Even if they are not in the reference, you can add them and make your drawing look more lively. They also draw attention to the eyes in a portrait because they are the sharpest contrast between light and dark.

8. 
   Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. portrait by Robert A. Sloan

   Continue to add shading with crosshatching. Curve the lines to suggest the rounded shapes of features that are being defined by shadows. Work into darker shadows more heavily and lighter shadows carefully, one way to go lighter is to make the lines farther apart. A way to get the very lightest areas is to let each curving line trail off into a dotted line as it shades into a pale area.
   
   Continue to refine the shapes of every facial shadow with successive delicate layers of crosshatching. Check the photo and correct by darkening the rest if an area gets too dark. Shade even the teeth at the very corners where they're shadowed by the mouth, and don't be afraid to blur an outline by shading, that makes it look more realistic. Shade the eyes with one more layer of crosshatching, but leave a lighter area as if the light is reflecting from the iris to the right.
   
   Crosshatch the tie giving it a highlight to make it shinier than the tie in the photo reference, he probably wore different ties on different occasions. Crosshatch the suit to contrast with the shirt, but add some shadows on the shirt collar especially to the left side, and under the points of the collar. Detail anything that still looks too light and stop when you're happy with the final results.
   
   Reducing your art will make it look more detailed and the shading gets softer. Enlarging will make your lines more visible, so if you're working to enlarge it to a poster, try to keep your lines smooth, parallel and curved when possible to follow the shape of the feature you're shading. Don't outline the catchlight or any highlights on the face, just let them be defined by not shading on them.

Tips & Warnings

• The finer point your pen has, the softer and finer your shading will be on the crosshatched ink version. Either the Sakura Pigma Micron size .05 or the Prismacolor Premier Fineline Marker size 005 has a very fine point suitable for doing fine crosshatching. If you have to use a heavier line, like the size 05 Prismacolor or size 1 or 2 Pigma Micron, or an extra fine point Sharpie, then do the drawing large enough that your shading won't look too crude.
• Do several pencil drawings and sketches before choosing the best of them to do your final inked version. The more often you draw the same person, even doodling, the more accurately you'll get the likeness and his personality.
• Try caricaturing Dr. King by exaggerating his features, to learn their individual shapes and quirks. Then draw realistically for the final version.
• If you have trouble with the sketching stages, you can enlarge a photo reference and trace directly from it, but keep the tracing very simple and do all the shading by hand to keep the expression and details original.
• Don't untape your tracing from your drawing paper until you've lifted it and checked to see that all details are drawn in. It's more work to reposition it if you have moved it.
• Don't use workable matte fixative without adequate ventilation.
• Don't smoke or burn candles or have other open flame around where you use workable matte fixative or any spray paint.