Pencil Portrait Drawing Tutorial Portrait drawing can be one of the most difficult challenges a beginning artist can face. Even artists who draw other subjects well can find drawing human features difficult. Some beginning artists avoid portrait drawing altogether, under the mistaken conception that no amount of practice will help. Drawing portraits in pencil doesn't need to be difficult. Using many of the same techniques used in other types of drawings, you can sketch a portrait in pencil you'll be proud to hang on your wall.
• Sketch the outline of your subject's face. Note whether it is more rounded or if you will be working with an oval or squared shape. Once you've gotten the shape of the face the way you want it, you'll have a good jumping-off point to place the features.
• Lightly divide the face into four sections. Do this by drawing a centered vertical line and crossing it with a centered horizontal line. Sketch the nose first, based around where the two lines intersect. This will help you proportion and center the features of the subject of your portrait.
• Sketch the left eye in the left quadrant and the right eye in the right quadrant, ensuring that each corner of the eye comes down to meets the vertical line. Don't detail the eyes yet. Pay attention to shape. Are the eyes oval, round, almond shape, or squinty? You want the outline to be correct before you draw anything else.
• Draw the mouth, with one half of the upper and lower lip on either side of the vertical line. Draw the entire mouth below the horizontal line. Again, aim for the basic shape of the mouth, focusing on whether the lips are thin or plump. Turn the lips up slightly if your portrait subject will be smiling, and leave space between the lips for teeth.
• Erase the guidelines you sketched. You have the basic face laid out and won't need them anymore. Draw pupils inside the basic eye shapes, then add eyebrows by coloring them in. You can apply the eyebrows with short, angled strokes to give them a stiff appearance or by holding your pencil at an angle and coloring back and forth to give the eyebrows a fuller look. Add light shading to the pupils, then smudge the center to give them a reflective look.
• Add shading around one corner of the nose to bring it away from the face. The shading helps relieve some of the flatness of the portrait. Sketch a few small lines around the eyes (smile lines) and around the corners of the mouth. Add a little shading to give a cleft. It's all in the shading at this stage for the facial features. The more lines you add, the older you can make the person in your drawing. Smudging with your finger or the edge of an eraser can help blend your pencils lines and shading to soften the overall effect and make it look more natural.
• Finish your portrait with hair. Begin at the top of the face and sketch in the hairline the way you want it. To add specific texture to your portrait's hair, color it in with tight overlapping circles to create a curly effect, long pencil strokes for straight hair or wavy lines for wavy hair. Sketch in the ears last. How much of them you draw depends upon the hair and how it will cover the ears.
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