How to Draw Human Portrait

Wuyu

2/20/2017

Human portrait is a drawing of someone’s face and it is favorite of many artists. Some artists draw portraits from photos and pictures, other artists prefer to draw portrait from real people which means they found a model to draw. Rajacenna is a famous pencil portrait artist who has draw many star’s portraits and she draw their portraits from photos or pictures. Even her drawing is fantastic and real, I still feel those portraits are not very vivid.  My favorite pencil realistic human portrait artist is Diego Fazio, he usually draw beautiful women and his draw in lively way since he draw those portrait from real people. Several people don’t think they have talent to draw. Although realistic drawing requires many artistic skills, drawing portraits is not very hard, just like learn how to ride bicycle, once you learn it, you will never forget it. Follow the step and draw patiently.

Choosing a good model is the most important thing before start to draw a portrait. As a beginner, choosing an adult for your model is easier to start than choose a child. Since adults have deeper facial features than children, it’s much easier for you to see the facial proportion. Also, choose a model which you think is beautiful because the artwork won’t come out very good if you think the model doesn’t look good. Then, ask your model to pose for you in a place which have light on. I suggest you to use a studio light because it’s free to move and it’s easy to adjust the height and angle of the light source.  Remember, harsh or hard light can not create good shadow on your model’s face. Using soft light can make your model’s face look flatter and creates moderate highlights or dark facial shadow.

Preparing the material is the next important step. First, you need to prepare some quality drawing pencils and it should include both light pencils and hard pencils such as 2H, HB, 2B, and 4B pencils. Sharpen pencils by using penknife in order to make pencil stumps long and sharp. In addition, You need to prepare more than one type of eraser because each eraser have different use. Different erasers made from different materials and they have various shapes. For example, Rubber eraser it’s the most common eraser we use in daily life, it can erase graphite. kneaded eraser can pulled into different forms just like plasticine, you can use it to erase tiny pencil lines and you also can clean the kneaded eraser by pulling it. After all materials have been prepared, using a clamp to hold your sketch paper on a drawing board and find a comfortable chair to sit.