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