Today I propose one of the best drawing exercises you can do to improve your skills as portrait painters: The self-portrait.
Let's face it. Portrait drawing can be scary to some. You sit down to draw a representational drawing of somebody and something goes really wrong along the way. You're not sure what happened, but you know that the drawing you just created just doesn't quite look like your mother or your boyfriend. Fortunately, this doesn't have to be case. With a bit of knowledge, practice, and few tricks used by the pros, accurate and realistic portrait drawings can be created by anyone - yes you can!
It doesn't require talent to create amazing, lifelike portraits. It only requires "know how" and practice. This execise gives you the practice required to create accurate portraits, strategies for locating facial proportions, and techniques used by artists and illustrators to ensure likeness.
In my portrait courses, I have always advised my students to do a self-portrait at least once a month.
By doing this, we were able to improve our ability to correctly see a face, improve proportions, shading, and ease in our drawings and portraits.
It is not about making a super picture full of details and filigree, but rather to be able to achieve the greatest possible similarity in a short time. For example, in real time, this portrait took me to draw it 35 minutes.
In a part of the video, you will see that I turn the drawing around, this serves to see clearly what mistakes we may have made without realizing it, and it will also increase the similarity of your portraits.
Although the photograph is not turned around, you must also turn the photo around, of course. There is a version of this tutorial in Spanish on my channel
Materials:
Drawing paper 120 grams
Pencils: 2B, 4B
Black marker 0.2
Kneaded eraser
Let's face it. Portrait drawing can be scary to some. You sit down to draw a representational drawing of somebody and something goes really wrong along the way. You're not sure what happened, but you know that the drawing you just created just doesn't quite look like your mother or your boyfriend. Fortunately, this doesn't have to be case. With a bit of knowledge, practice, and few tricks used by the pros, accurate and realistic portrait drawings can be created by anyone - yes you can!
It doesn't require talent to create amazing, lifelike portraits. It only requires "know how" and practice. This execise gives you the practice required to create accurate portraits, strategies for locating facial proportions, and techniques used by artists and illustrators to ensure likeness.
In my portrait courses, I have always advised my students to do a self-portrait at least once a month.
By doing this, we were able to improve our ability to correctly see a face, improve proportions, shading, and ease in our drawings and portraits.
It is not about making a super picture full of details and filigree, but rather to be able to achieve the greatest possible similarity in a short time. For example, in real time, this portrait took me to draw it 35 minutes.
In a part of the video, you will see that I turn the drawing around, this serves to see clearly what mistakes we may have made without realizing it, and it will also increase the similarity of your portraits.
Although the photograph is not turned around, you must also turn the photo around, of course. There is a version of this tutorial in Spanish on my channel
Materials:
Drawing paper 120 grams
Pencils: 2B, 4B
Black marker 0.2
Kneaded eraser