If you ever picked up a simple pencil and drew people, then you probably know how difficult it is to create a portrait of a person. Indeed, in addition to the general outlines, it is necessary to use three-dimensional graphics, the play of light and shadow. This must be done in order to make the flat image come to life and look the most realistic. However, not everyone knows about the use of such a technique. Therefore, we decided in our article to talk about how to draw portraits of people correctly.
What is a portrait of a man?
Before you start drawing, you need to find out what a portrait is. This is mainly an image of the head (from the top of the head to the shoulders). A little less often portraits depict people in full growth. The purpose of such a picture is to maximally accurately convey the image that the artist sees in the image of the model. Portraits can be painted with simple and colored pencils, paints, crayons, charcoal.
Each artist knows how to draw a portrait of a person, regardless of the technique used and improvised tools. In this case, the master performs a drawing using light and shadow. But in order to get a more or less realistic and close to the original portrait, you need to train. As practice shows, you need to make at least 50-100 drawings.
This is necessary in order to fill your hand and develop your own technique for transmitting information to the canvas.
What are portraits of people?
Before you draw portraits of people, you need to find out what they are. In this case, it all depends on the gender and age of the model with which the portrait is made. For example, images can be female and male, childish. Moreover, they differ from each other. In particular, the male figure differs from the female in more rude facial features, the presence of a massive chin, the lower jaw in men is sharper and wider.
In addition, male portraits are characterized by the presence of protruding parts of the face: cheekbones and superciliary arches. Female drawings contain more rounded shapes and smoothed corners in the forehead and chin.
We prepare all the accessories for drawing
At the first stage, it is recommended to prepare a sheet of paper, several simple pencils with different levels of softness, and erase. Experienced artists also use a number of additional tools, for example, an electric wizard, which works more gently and does not leave such streaks as a regular eraser. Before you draw portraits of people and make them realistic, you need to carefully follow our instructions step by step.
And, of course, take care of the model or find a picture, a photo from which you will draw a portrait.
Choose a simple pattern
If you are just starting to take the first steps in the visual arts, then you should look for photos or pictures that depict not too complex portraits of people. For beginners, painting pictures made in a difficult technique is undesirable. Better choose a simpler photo. As an example, we will tell you how to draw a female image.
Determine the top and bottom of the image
At the next stage, take a piece of paper, carefully consider your model, study all the details and start drawing. Identify the top of the future sketch and bottom. Visually measure the face parameters of the image. This must be done so that you get the most accurate picture. And so that everything fits on your worksheet: hair, forehead, chin, neck and, possibly, shoulders.
Next, we draw a phased portrait of a person as follows: divide your sheet of paper exactly in half horizontally; repeat the same thing vertically; you should get four identical squares. In this case, do not put too much pressure on the pencil, since all these lines are auxiliary, and will subsequently be erased.
The delimitation of the plane on the sheet
Take a pencil and go to one of the nearest upper squares. Divide it in half. Do the same with both squares in the bottom plane. Then divide the bottom squares again in half.
Outline the face shape
Next, we draw a phased portrait of a person, starting with a sketch of the shape of the face. To do this, go to the horizontal line of demarcation on the sheet, and then, stepping back from the top of the page a few centimeters, draw lines of the face. Stretch them all the way down and round them at the end. Moreover, the obtained facial lines should ideally be completely symmetrical. Thus, you will get an oval of the face, cheeks, cheekbones and chin.
We outline the lines of the nose, forehead and hair
At the next stage of drawing, in the middle of the face oval, we outline the nose area with two lines. Draw a clearer chin and line to the hair area. Indent the forehead. And then we draw bangs and hair with wavy movements.
We will tell about how to draw a portrait of a person with a pencil using shading and an eraser.
Draw eyebrows and nose wings.
The next step is to draw eyebrows and nose wings. Move the pencil to the top plane of the drawing. Stand back slightly from the forehead and cheekbones. Draw eyebrows resembling two identical and symmetrical, slightly raised arcs. Then move on to the nose. To do this, in the middle of two strips (made them in the previous step), draw the upper and lower parts of the nose. The rest of the face is made clearer.
How to draw a portrait of a person using light and shadow, we'll talk later, when our picture is completely ready.
We draw eyes and nostrils
The next step is to draw the outlines of the eyes and nostrils. To do this, clearly draw two lines under the eyebrows and draw slightly elongated ovals of the eyes. Then draw pupils, eyelids and eyelashes inside them. Go down to your nose and point your nostrils.
We draw lips and ears
At the final stage of creating the sketch, we make a small fold-fold under the nose and draw lips. Next, draw the ears and part of the neck. The sketch is ready. It remains only to shade all parts of the face using a harder pencil and eraser. At the same time, in those areas where you overdo the shadow a bit, you can make white areas with the help of the erase.
Now you know how to draw portraits of people with an ordinary pencil.