I've met many beginning artists who want to begin from scratch and draw a portrait of a person they know or someone popular. Drawing excellent portraits is much like the holy grail of sketching. Generating real looking and living portraits needs an excellent skill close to mastery. Fortunately you can learn these skills much simpler, when you learn them separately.
The 1st step is mastering to draw the different characteristics on the human face. By separating single characteristics and sketching them separately you can learn faster. You'll focus on rigorously practising one feature at the same time. Which means you improve your being familiar with and familiarity with the important points. Fill several sheets of paper with eyes, noses etc and you'll get a sense how they look and ways in which to draw them. But never draw too small. A couple of eyes, mouths or noses on one sheet (letter or A4 sized). That leaves you sufficient room for details.
Now you have to means assembling all you will have acquired when sketching the characteristics one at the same time. You should place the facial characteristics in proper proportionalities, distances and layout so they really fit together and the big picture is sensible. So what is the proper layout? There are some rules that will enable you to place the characteristics on the appropriate positions:
* The eyes can be found halfway in between the top of the head and the chin. This is among the most important lessons to master when sketching portraits. Many (me, too) are inclined to place the eyes too high, so the portrait gets a flat forehead. It seems to be some optical illusion that makes us believe the eyes are placed higher than they are.
* Another trouble with the eyes is their positioning to the left and the appropriate. Between them there should be sufficient room for exactly another eye. Exactly the same for the left and appropriate - in between each eye and the border of the face is sufficient room for another eye. Overall a individual face has sufficient room for five eyes in a row (although this might look rather weird).
* As we're inserting a lot of eyes into one face, let's add two more. This time they help us to put the eyebrows where they fit in. The distance in between the eyebrows and the eyes is equal to the eyes' height
* Then the bottom of the nose is found halfway in between the eyes and the chin
* Midway in between chin and nose is the mouth
* The mouth's corners are found below the middle of the eyes. But this will differ considerably as there are many individuals with wider or less wide mouths
* The ears' top commences where the eyebrows are and their base may line up with the base of the nose. But these measures will vary as people have many differently sized and shaped ears.
Applying these rules you should be able to position the facial characteristics appropriately. But constantly remember: these measures and positions are idealized! In reality these measures will fluctuate a bit. That is what makes up the character of a human face.
And that is what the most important ability for portrait sketching is about. You need to get good at this 3 rd ability to draw portraits that look like the original model. Each individual face has its character and looks unique. There are 2 reasons for this:
* Initially the facial characteristics alone differ a bit by form, color or size (e . g . wide vs. small noses, thick vs. thin lips, etc.)
* Second, the layout of the facial characteristics differs a bit from the idealized measures I demonstrated you before. The eyes can take a position somewhat less wide, the chin could be tougher or weaker. Finally this changes the entire layout of the face and creates character and originality.
The key for sketching resembling and live like portraits is to depict these slight variations and bring them to paper. This needs a lot practice and a skilled eye. But the more portraits you draw the better you're going to get and the much more resembling your portraits will appear.
So what do you think you're waiting for? Start sketching portraits!
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