How To Draw Portraits - Face Drawing Tutorial

When people dream of becoming a great artist, they know that drawing good portraits is one of the hardest areas to master. There are certain skills needed to draw realistic faces and these skills are easier to master if you take them one step at a time. Here are some tips to help you when drawing a portrait.

Face Drawing

Drawing facial features is the first step.

Divide the single facial features up and draw them separateley. When you divide up the facial features, you will learn much faster because you will be focusing on one area, the nose, eyes, ears, etc.

To start, simply draw lots of ears on a piece of paper, the same with eyes, nose, etc. Just by doing this alone, you will start to understand more about each particular feature and how it should look. Remember not to draw too small at first, make the features quite large.

The next stage is to draw a face making sure to place all the features in the correct positions, this means getting the proportions correct, along with distances between drawing-eyes, nose, mouth and ears.

Getting the correct layout right is very important. There are a few face drawing rules that will help you to position the features in the right positions.

How to draw portraits

* IMPORTANT The eyes are positioned halfway between the chin and the top of the head. This is one of the most critical lessons to master when learning how to draw portraits. It is really common to place the eyes too high, try not to make this mistake.

* Here is a great technique for spacing the eyes correctly. There should be enough space for five eyes in a row! What do i mean by this? Well, between the eyes, there should be enough space for one more eye and the same between the left and right eye and the face border.

* When drawing eyebrows, the distance between the eyes and eyebrows is the same as the eyes height
* Halfway between the chin and eyes is where the bottom of the nose is located.
* Halfway between the nose and chin is the mouth
* The corners of the mouth are positioned below the center of the eyes. This can change as there are lots of people with wider or smaller mouths, but it's a good rule of thumb to go by.
* Another rule of thumb applies to the ears. The top of the ears start where the eyebrows are and the bottom of the ears line up with the bottom of the nose. As with the corners of the mouth, these guides can vary as people have many different sized and shaped ears.

Using these guides you will be able to place the facial features correctly. But always keep in mind: these are rough guides that will apply in a lot of instances, but in reality these measurements will differ slightly.

Remember, everybodys face is unique :)

Because everybody is unique and different, no two faces are exactly the same, so to master portrait drawing, you need to master the art of drawing portraits that resemble the original person. Every face has its own personality and looks unique and special. There are two reasons for this:

* Everybodys facial features are slightly different, by shape, size or colour (for example tall vs. short ears, thick vs. thin eyes, etc.)

* Second reason, the position of the facial features may differ slightly from the guides I showed you before. The chin may be wide or narrow, the eyes can be a little closer together.
These few elements can change the overall layout of the face quite dramatically and it also gives the face it's own uniqueness.

So, to draw faces step by step, follow these guides, but remember, pencil drawings of people, especially faces, will differ from person to person and the key for mastering portrait drawing is to capture all these subtle differences.

Finally, the more you practice portrait drawings, the better you will get.

Good luck with your drawing and start drawing portraits that could one day be masterpieces!

CLICK HERE for a great program that shows you how to draw people step by step

How To Sketch People

Sketching people is an important part building up your artistic skills. Top artists are always drawing people, they draw their friends, work collegues, family, models, people in a restaurant, etc, etc.

Lots of artists sketch people they meet and see on their travels. A good idea is to carry a sketchbook everywhere you go, then simply start sketching people!

So, what is a sketch? A sketch is a way of practising your artistic skills in drawing an experimentary drawing – looking at how something works, it's almost like a rough description of what you see before you.

Sketches do not need to contain great detail. A sketch may be real or imagined.

It is almost like doing a quick study of something and while studying it, you jot down a quick report!

Why sketch people? Sketching dramatically enhances your basic art skills. Regular sketching of people will bring a fluid style to your work, you will become more confident.

When you master how to sketch people, you will be able to produce a finished artwork without relying on a reference photo.

How To Draw Real People

When drawing people, it’s essential that you get the right proportions and sizes. As a result, many books and courses on how to draw people, have detailed explanations of where the important proportions are.

The head is a great measuring tool, the head is classed as one unit. Realistic characters are six, seven or eight heads tall. Children tend to have big heads :) in comparison to the rest of their bodies, making them only four or five heads tall. (see diagram)

When people are asked to draw someone’s face, they seem to panic. Mainly people tend to panic because they think it will not look right, or maybe because they think it will be out of proportion. Even when someone can draw well, they think it is still very difficult for them to get someone’s face right. Really, it is not the persons face that is very hard to draw, it is much more difficult to produce a quality drawing, a drawing that actually looks like the person’s face that you are aiming to draw. It is easy to draw a face of any kind, but when it comes to drawing the face of a particular person, it becomes very hard.

When you are asked to draw a specific person, the picture of a nose that you have in your head, may be completely different to the nose of the person you are drawing. What you really need to do is forget that picture that is in your mind of the human nose, and draw what you see. This makes the drawing look more realistic. The same applies with the eyes, mouth, ears and face. Having a drawing tutorial for beginners is great and WILL help, it’s more than just a tutorial that’s needed. The secret is to have no preconceived ideas in your mind of what someone’s eyes, nose, ears and mouth look like, Simply draw what you SEE!

You definitely need a Step By Step Drawing People Course, but you need to lock the images you have in your head away and simply draw what’s in front of you. Obviously proportions play a large part when drawing people and drawing what you see is extremely important when trying to judge proportions.

Using your pencil, try and accurately gauge each measurement, ie distance between the eyes, height and width of the eyes, nose size, etc So all in all, the important factors with being able to draw people well, is getting the contours and shading exact, along with correct proportions and perspective. I hope this has helped guide you into becoming a better artist!

check out the best course I know of on how to draw real people. http://tinyurl.com/drawingpeople

One Of The Most Crucial Parts When Learning to Draw People

Gesture Line or Action Line Drawing

For advanced, intermediate and beginners drawing lessons, great emphasis should be placed on the most important step of learning how to draw people and that is the gesture line! Some artists have the gesture line the whole length of the subject, from head to toe, other artists have the gesture line showing the location of the spine. But the gesture line idea is the same.

Finding gesture lines

Start by drawing a single smooth line, which goes through most of the person's pose (see attached images for some examples).

Watching people moving around will help tremendously, observe how their limbs move with or against the curve of the spine. If you notice the spine always keeps it's natural, smooth curve.

A great little bit of advice is to draw stick figures, starting with a gesture line and then adding the head, arms and legs.

The best step by step how to draw people program I know of and can't recommend enough, is by artist Taylor Roy who makes learning to draw people easy! Click Here for details

Easy Steps To Draw A Face

If you are a budding artist and you really want to draw people well, you can hone and tone your skills with the help of online drawing lessons. Learning how to draw someone well takes time and patience, but knowing top artists tips and techniques will turn your drawings into masterpieces!

Drawing people is most certainly one of the most challenging forms of drawing,. especially when looking at how to draw a human face.

But with practice and the right tuition, an average artist can make the jump to world class artist very quickly!

There are many online tutorials regarding drawing a human face step by step, there are video and document versions. The course i recommend has both video and document, check it out by following this link and good luck :) Click Here