5 Tips: Learning to draw a portrait - Explained step by step

If you search for "portrait drawing" on the Internet, you will see a lot of results. Drawing portraits is something that fascinates people. Capturing one's own face or that of someone else with pens on paper is and remains an exceptional skill.in painting.

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You need this material:

To draw a good portrait, you don't need much. A sheet of paper and a sharpened pencil is all you need. The more advanced you are, the more material you can use when drawing.

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We use the following material when drawing portraits:

1. Suitable drawing paper
2. Different pencil sizes (e.g. HB, 3B, 8B)
3. Mechanical pencils
4. Paper eraser
5. Charcoal pencils or black pastel pencils
6. White chalk
7. White gel pens

What we don't use is an eraser. Often you just make spots on your drawing and it doesn't make it any better.

A few exercises in advance

You can also just take a photo and start drawing. But if you want to warm up a bit with portrait drawing, there are some very effective exercises.

1. take a good look at the people around you

This sounds strange and perhaps a bit unusual. But it helps. Every face has something that makes it unique. The more people you draw, the more people you drawobserves.

Some people have a special sparkle in their eyes, another has laugh lines or tighter eyebrows and so on.

2. Deception makes perfection

There's no shame in cropping your first portraits. This gives you a good sense of proportion. It is best to draw through the outlines and then draw freehand.

3. Draw where and when you can

You almost always have a pencil nearby. And if you listen to your teacher, lecturer or boss, why not draw a portrait of him or her?

Are you curious why we recommend everyone to start painting? Then read our blog article: '' Why kids should paint: More fun than coloring and crafting ''.

A few basic steps

1. Ratios

In a portrait, the proportions of the face are crucial. Of course, every face is different. But a few rules of thumb can't hurt:

1. Face shapes come in many types. Essentially they are all variations of a more or less oval shape.
2. The area from the hairline to the upper eyelid often covers about a third of the face. People often underestimate the height of the forehead and draw it too short. A minimally smaller part follows up to the tip of the nose. The same applies to the lower part of the face up to the chin.
3. If you draw a vertical line through the face, the point is between the eyes, the tip of the nose.
4. The eye rim towards the nose is level with thewing of the nose. From the top, draw a diagonal line to the corner of the mouth, on which the wing of the nose should also lie.

2. The hardest part: drawing the perfect eye

If the eyes are drawn well, in most cases you will have a successful portrait. It is therefore worthwhile to practice drawing eyes. Especially with the eyes, it is important that you do not forget the shine. Therefore, you should never draw the pupils and iris completely, but leave the areas white. The iris can be shaded in such a way that it becomes slightly darker outwards. This way you achieve a particularly lively expression.

3. Drawing nose

When drawing noses, less is often more: it is enough to accentuate the nostrils with light shadows. The nostrils are never round.They are more like dashes or semicircles. Most people have a small laugh line from the nostril to the mouth. This often gives the face a lively, friendly expression.

Often the nose is so wide that the nostrils are flush with the inner edge of the eye. The length from top to tip usually covers just under a third of the face. Since the nose does not stop growing, older people usually have a larger nose.

4. Drawing Mouth

The lips are often quite wrinkled and have many light reflections. Therefore, when hatching, you must be careful to leave out areas and thetypical structure created by darker lines. The upper lip always has the so-called cupid's bow, which you can accentuate with a particularly light accent. The opening of the mouth is never just a straight line, but has a slight wave shape.

5. Drawing Hair

You don't want to have to draw each hair separately, but on the other hand you want it to look like you have more than 100,000 hairs growing on your head - that's how many the average person has. It is important to use shadows to create a shiny effect. To achieve this, the hair must darken towards the tip, as with the bangs in the example below. You can achieve a streaky effect by shading some areas more heavily and drawing in individual, darker lines.

Would you also like to see if painting is something for you? Then view our blog article about learn to paint.

How to draw a portrait: Step by step explanation

Now it's time to get started: You've chosen a photo and now you want to start drawing. Here you can see the steps we use to draw a portrait.

Choosing a suitable template

The great artists of the past centuries had one decisive advantage and disadvantage over us: there were no photographs. On the one hand, that was an advantage, because if you wanted a picture of someone, you had to have it painted. But it was still a disadvantage. Because the model is moving and that makes it very, very difficult toto draw it.

Draw your portraits from photos

It doesn't matter whether you take a photo of your favourite star or a photo of your grandma. It's easier if you start by choosing a photo of your model looking at the camera from the front.

Look carefully at the picture before you start drawing. What is the shape of the head? What are the proportions? Which features stand out? Where are shadows, where are reflections of light?

Step 1: Pre-drawing proportions

First, take a hard to medium hard pencil (e.g. 2H or H) and sketch the outline of the face. Of course, you take your time to do this and compare it with the photo again and again. Some people find it useful to work with a schedule.

Step 2: First Shading

With a hard pencil, you now apply shadow to the places that should become dark afterwards. Again, you always compare it to the photo: Are the shadows really where they should be? In the next step, edit your previous hatches with the paper eraser. This makes them softer and easier to work out.

Step 3:Drawing details

Details such as wrinkles, eyebrows and hair should be traced with a mechanical pencil with a soft lead (e.g. 2B). You also darken the shadow. In addition, pay special attention to small wrinkles, because they bring the face to life.

Step 4: Adding accents

The portrait is now almost finished. It just needs the final touches to look vibrant. You now darken the pupils with a charcoal pencil. You also do this with the dark shadows. Mark light reflections with a white chalk pencil or a white gel pen. This works especially well if you don't have whitepaper, but yellowish or grayish.

Important tip!

You'll probably have to draw hundreds of portraits before you're happy with it, so don't give up just because you're not completely happy with the photo! Drawing is so much fun and one thing is certain: everyone can learn to draw.