How to Draw a Portrait

Pencil is an excellent medium to use when you learning to draw portraits.

Rendering a portrait that truly reflects another person requires real artistic talent, but almost anyone can learn to draw a recognizable portrait with a little practice. The key is faithfully reflecting the relationship between the facial features. There are several techniques you can learn to help you with natural proportions and lines and how to keep all the features on the same scale as the rest of the face.

Things You'll Need

• Pencils
• Drawing pad

Instructions

Tips for Drawing Portraits

1. Consider facial proportions as you draw the head and face. All below-mentioned tips assume that the artist is at the same eye level as the subject. When you view a head from the front, the width is about two thirds of the height. When you view a head from the side, the width is about seven eighths of the height. The eyes are usually just slightly above the midway point of the face. The full width of the nose is close to the distance between the eyes. The top of the ear is close to the same level as the eyes.

2. Draw the eyes. Most portrait artists start with and focus a lot of attention on drawing the eyes. Note the difference between the upper and lower eyelid. The upper eyelid usually covers the top 15-20 percent of the iris. Leaving a small triangular unshaded area at the top of the eyeball allows you to to add a realistic "glint" effect with later shading around it.

3. Draw the ears, nose and mouth. These facial features vary greatly among individuals so do you best to render them faithfully. Make sure that you keep the facial features in proportion. If you get the correct relationship between the various facial features then you are three quarters of the way to a good portrait. Try not to overemphasize the mouth, especially if the subject does not have a prominent chin (a strong chin helps balance out a bigger mouth or fuller lips).

4. Shade your portrait and add detail. This final step brings your portrait to life by adding shading and tone. Filling in detail like hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, and facial lines also helps make the portrait realistic.

Tips & Warnings

• Some sources teach that it is best to draw the facial features first and then draw in the head and complete the portrait, so you might try that technique if you are having problems drawing the shape of the head or face.

References

• Arty Factory: Pencil Portrait Drawing
• Portrait-Artist: Drawing the Face
• Draw 23: Drawing Portraits (Video)