Getting Started On Portraits

I've made posts about portraits before, but this time, I'd like to make a guide for the absolute beginner to portraits.

In an earlier post, I told you about how to apply the golden ratio to drawing a face, but in this post, I'd like to show you a more simplified version of this.

Placement Of Features

As you can see, all I've done is draw a basic face, then draw a horizontal line at the halfway mark, a vertical line down the middle and another horizontal line at approximately one third the distance from the bottom of my vertical line and the bottom of of my face.

I drew my eyes along the top horizontal line, my nose around the vertical line and my mouth along the bottom horizontal line. This keeps everything lined up. I drew my eyebrows right under where the top of the nose was.

I just want to note that I used pen because that's what I had available to me and so that the lines would show up. When you do this yourself, you'll use a light pencil so that you can either erase these lines when you don't need them any more or they'll get blended in when you do your shading.

You don't always have to use these lines. I don't. I just draw by eye, but they can be helpful for people getting started. It goes without saying, though, if you're going to use these lines, make sure you draw them very lightly. You should be able to erase them easily, or cover them up with your shading.

You're also not going to draw the same shapes I drew. You're going to draw whatever shape eyes, nose and mouth that your subject has.

Pupil Size

I imagine most people probably don't pay a lot of attention to this, but the size of your subject's pupils will send a big message about their mood and demeanor. If you draw your subject's pupil's pinpoint small, like this

they'll look angry, disgusted or just shocked. Most of the time we don't want our subjects to look this way, so we want to open up the pupil a bit, more like this.

Subjects with pupils like this will look friendly, open, and interested. They will also come across as being generally more attractive.

But don't go the other extreme, ie this.

If you draw your subject's pupils like this, they'll look like they're on drugs or concussed.

Start In Black and White

I think the best advice I can give you for when you're getting started on portraits is to start out working in black and white. I'm not saying you need to work in graphite. You can use paint if you'd like, but I think you'll be less stressed if you don't worry about color for a bit.

Working in black and white will help you to perfect your shading and your highlighting.

This brings me to my next point...

Pay Attention To Value

 Here are some examples of portraits I've done and where I put the shading and highlighting. In these two, I put shading only on the left-hand side of the nose.

In this one, I put shading on the top and bottom of the nose, but nothing in between.

It's not about a streak of highlight down the middle and blocks of shading on the side, like this,

Also, you'll find that most of the time, you'll get the best results if you layer your shading and highlighting.

example of layered highlighting

example of layered shading

I hope you find these tips useful. If you use them and want to share your work with me, please post it to social media and tag me. I'm Sara Makes Art on Youtube, Facebook, and MeWe and @_saramakesart on Instagram.