How to learn to draw portraits beautifully. Secrets of drawing a portrait from a photograph

Many people find an outlet in drawing. Some people want to become professional artists, but for others it's just a hobby. This article will tell you how to draw a portrait with a pencil step by step for beginners. Why do people draw portraits anyway? Some people just really like the person they want to draw. Others are interested in trying themselves. The third one wants to impress. But this all applies to adults.

But many children want to congratulate their mother on the holiday or simply make her happy. They get the idea to draw her portrait with a pencil. After all, such a gift will be pleasant, remembered for a long time and will take its place in the house. Not all kids go to art school, but I want them to. the drawing was done correctly and pleased with its beauty. Therefore, here we will tell you a lesson on how to draw a person’s face on paper step by step. And since you can draw anyone, even if it’s your mother or your favorite actress, this lesson will be useful to a variety of people.

Even beginners should do well and quickly learn portrait techniques. And all because the children really like the chosen object for drawing and they want to please someone with it. This is the best motivation.

Where to start drawing a portrait? First steps

To learn how to draw a portrait, you need to move from simple to complex. The human head in the picture has only three angles: full face, profile and half-turn. First, you should try to learn how to correctly depict a person’s face from the side. After this, it will become much easier to write it from the front.

It is worth remembering that the faces of men and women are slightly different. When drawing a portrait of a man, you should use more hard, clear lines. In a portrait of a woman, they should be abandoned, giving preference to softer, smoother and more feminine ones.

First, you should draw the frame of the future portrait with a pencil. Display the shape of the head, the approximate distance between the chin and the back of the head, the distance between the eyes. At the same time, one should not forget about scale, proportions and other facial measurements. Pencil strokes must be made thin and light so that they can be corrected at any time.

After you have managed to draw the basis of the future portrait, you should begin to depict the facial features. To avoid a distorted image, you need to constantly check the drawing and the model.

Once the different parts of the face have been marked step by step, you should highlight those parts that protrude, namely forehead, cheekbones, chin. In general, you should pay attention to the features of a person’s face and try to convey them. Be it the thickness of the lips, the height of the forehead or the location of the eyes.

Hairstyle should be given special attention, because it is a component of a person’s image, style and perception. You need to draw it with long strokes, darkening the hair at the roots, thereby giving it volume.

To complete the drawing, you need to erase the extra wireframe lines and start working on the details. Skin, hair, shadows and light. All this should be conveyed in a pencil drawing. Pencil strokes, which become lighter or darker when pressed, will help with this. The background needs to be drawn dark strokes, pressing on the pencil. This must be done so that the person stands out and is in the foreground. You should pay attention to the individual characteristics and zest of a person and convey them on paper.

Portrait artists have golden rules for drawing a face, called the standard:

eye line - a segment in the middle between the top of the head and the chin;
the line of the nose runs between the eyebrows and to the chin;
the segment between the nose and lips is divided into three parts: on the bottom line of the upper part there will be the beginning of the lips;
the head should also be divided into three equal parts, the topmost will indicate the hairline, the middle - the eyebrows, and the bottom - the nose.

How to draw eyes?

Special attention should be paid to drawing eyes, since they are the mirror of the soul and are very important when depicting a person. Where to start:

draw two ovals;
inside them there are two more - the iris and the pupil;
draw eyelashes, not straight sticks, but arched from the eyelid to the eyebrows, thicker at the corners and short at the beginning;
hatch so that the edges of the iris are darkened, and highlights are indicated on the pupil.

Portrait in pencil

Drawing lessons on the Internet

In the modern world, even if a person has not studied drawing in an art studio and is a complete beginner artist, all is not lost for him. After all, in the age of the Internet, many artists work completely free of charge. post drawing lessons online. Step-by-step photos showing each step, training videos. All this will help you master the skill and learn how to draw beautiful portraits. You just have to find the appropriate video or blog, and then even beginners will begin to produce beautiful paintings.

No matter how interesting and useful the article is, not everyone is able to perceive what is written with ease; for many it will be easier to see it than to read and try to understand it on their own. Drawing from the tutorial will be quite simple and fun.

It is worth remembering that a real artist is one who cannot imagine his life without drawing and holds a pencil in his hands every day!

Do you dream of learning to draw? And look for detailed step-by-step drawing lessons for beginning artists? I will try to help you in this difficult task and tell you about the many nuances when writing beautiful drawings and portraits in pencil and watercolor! With the help of my step-by-step lessons, not only adults, but also children will be able to master the basics of fine art!
In this section I publish all my step-by-step drawing lessons, and separately, in the section Drawing Lessons for Children, I collect simple drawing lessons for beginning artists. Therefore, if you are just taking your first steps in drawing with pencil and watercolor, I recommend starting your training with this section. Be sure to check out all the drawing lessons and tips for artists collected on my blog!

Drawing a portrait For a beginning artist it seems an incredibly difficult undertaking. Often beginners rush to create a portrait without studying its basic principles and techniques. Each face drawing ends in disappointment, which can lead to a complete loss of interest. You shouldn’t give up, because every portrait painter started by studying the basic rules, practiced them, made dozens of mistakes and eventually achieved positive results. Now we'll figure it out drawing a portrait with a pencil, its features and rules. They will help you achieve accuracy, and most importantly, realism and high quality of the portrait.

Almost every person wants to have their own portrait at home, which is considered one of the most complex drawings that an artist can draw. It is not surprising that there is a great demand for this type of drawings. Therefore, the duty of a beginner and an experienced artist is to step by step improve his skills in drawing a person’s facial features, because through the face you can convey not only gender and age, but also the character and temperament of a person. According to their characteristics, portraits are divided into three types: children's, women's and men's. Today we will learn to draw the last view - male portrait in pencil. It has its own characteristics and secrets, which we will tell you about in this step-by-step lesson.

A step-by-step lesson on how to draw a woman's portrait with a simple pencil. After going through just a few steps, you can understand the main features that are inherent in portrait of a woman and are absent in the rest. The face will be positioned from the front, hair pulled back. This is important to know before starting work. Now you can get started.

Hands are a personal and unique part of the body. They can often tell a story about a person's life through their shape and size. For many years people have been studying their lines and structure, trying to read the future from the lines. Today we will learn draw hands with a simple pencil using a step-by-step lesson. We will pay special attention to their construction and the application of shadows so that the drawing comes out as realistic as possible.

Before you start painting a full-fledged portrait, you need to learn how to draw the details of the face. In today's lesson we will learn, how to draw lips in pencil, thanks to the step-by-step description. The lesson is not difficult and is intended for beginner artists, but do not rush. To achieve a result, namely beautifully draw a person's lips, you need to carefully follow the rules of construction and shading.

Many people dream of painting a portrait of their family and friends. But before you draw the face as a whole, you need to learn how to draw the details of the face. This lesson for beginning artists is devoted to the question “ how to draw a nose" This task is not difficult, you just need to use the information about constructing and applying shadows. The shape and size of the nose may vary, but the basic design remains the same. Let's quickly find out how easy it is draw a nose with a pencil.

For many beginning artists, one of the difficult tasks is the question “ how to draw an ear?. Due to the complex structure of the ear, it is often sketched with hair, but this is not an option. There are situations when this approach is not appropriate, for example, if a person has short hair. So I'll tell you how to draw an ear step by step.

Probably every child loves to draw. This is an exciting, exciting activity in which children can express themselves and reveal themselves as individuals. As they grow older, the drawings of little artists also change.

They become meaningful, childish carelessness is replaced by realistic images. Perhaps it's time to teach children how to draw a portrait. The right approach will give a good result, because drawing a portrait step by step is not at all difficult.

Step-by-step instructions

Once you are sure that the children are in the right mood, you can start creating. To do this, you will need to prepare a sheet of paper, a well-sharpened pencil and an eraser, with which you can eliminate minor errors in the future masterpiece, completed in stages.

Let's draw a portrait step by step:

To begin, take a sheet of paper and mark its center. Then we draw an oval of the future face. It should resemble an upside down chicken egg. After this, the oval will need to be divided with dotted lines so that children have the opportunity to orient themselves when depicting parts of the face.

Therefore, we draw one vertical line and 2 horizontal lines on the drawing. Using a vertical line, we delimit the left and right parts of the face, and horizontal marks divide the face into 3 parts: forehead and eyebrows, eyes and nose, mouth and chin.

Let's move on to the next stage, where we draw the eyebrows and eyes. Eyebrows are two arches located parallel to each other. They are depicted above the top horizontal line. At the next stage, the eyebrows can be given any shape.

Under the same line we draw eyes, the shape of which can be chosen arbitrarily. The eyes are depicted as two mirrored arcs, between which there is a round iris and pupil.

In order for children to have a realistic drawing, it is necessary to draw eyelashes on the lower and upper eyelids. The length of the eyelashes on the upper eyelid should be greater than on the lower eyelid.

Draw the nose. This stage needs to be given special attention, since it is the nose that most children fail to achieve. In order to give it the correct shape and make it proportional, it is recommended to start drawing the nose from the inside of the eyebrows. A thin arc is drawn down, indicating the crown of the nose.

After this, the wings of the nose and nostrils are drawn, all excess is erased with an eraser, and the lines are drawn with a pencil.

At the very bottom of the face we draw a mouth. It will be depicted as a lower arcuate line and two arcuate lines located on top. The upper and lower parts of the mouth are connected and outlined with a pencil. Using a slightly curved horizontal line, draw a line dividing the upper and lower lip.

The stage at which the portrait, depicted in stages, will be supplemented with finishing touches, involves the depiction of ears, shoulders and hair. In order for the drawing to be correct and all parts of the face to be proportional, it is necessary to follow the recommendations for their depiction.

So, the ears should be at the same level as the nose. After finishing the shoulders, you can move on to the hair. If the portrait depicts a man, then the hair will be short; if it is a woman, then you can come up with any haircut, hairstyle, hair length.

Having drawn the portrait in stages, use an eraser to erase minor errors, straighten the lines with a simple pencil, and also remove all marks that were made at the initial stage of drawing. If desired, the portrait can be supplemented with elements such as freckles and birthmarks.

The step-by-step instructions provided are easy for children. It allows you to master the basic skills of depicting a person’s face, learn to draw its parts correctly, observing the recommended proportions. The portrait turns out realistic, because it is made according to all the rules.

It is not difficult to instill in children a love of creativity if you approach this issue correctly. If you share the desire of young artists to draw and support their endeavors, they will certainly master their favorite pastime, because the support and understanding of their parents in this matter comes first.

Hello, dear readers of my blog. I’m in touch with you, Timur Mustaev. Quite recently, I started to get interested in pencil drawing. My friend is so good at it that I asked him for a couple of lessons. I also asked him to write an article specifically for beginners in drawing, like me, where all the stages of drawing are described in detail. Today, in this article, he shares his tips and secrets.

Before I start, I want to tell you the secret of how my friend learned to draw. He took the video course" Drawing a portrait from a photograph"and the result is obvious. Moreover, the author of the course promises a full refund if you don’t learn how to draw. But as my friend says, this is simply not possible! The course is very clear and everything is shown with examples.

Drawing a portrait from a photograph

Drawing something is not easy, but the process of mastering the technique of creating a portrait will go much faster if you take a few tips from this article.

After all, as it happens, you seem to draw, erase, draw again, waste “tons” of paper, but there are no results. What is the reason for such failures?

The thing is that, when trying to draw the eyes, nose or other parts of the model, beginners lose sight of the fact that the picture should be painted from the whole to the particular.

How to draw a portrait with a pencil step by step for beginners? Moving from simple to complex. Let me give you an example. Remember how a man emerges from the fog? At first, vague outlines appear. As the haze disappears, facial features become clearer. It should also be on paper.

There are three angles: profile, full face and half-turn - the so-called three-quarters.

Beginners can be advised to try painting a portrait of a person sitting in three-quarter or side view. Then, when the technique of creating a face in a half-turn has been perfected, you can move on to more complex techniques, painting a face from the front.

However, if you believe in your abilities, you can try to draw a person sitting upright from life.

Where to start?

The frame or basis of the portrait is the oval of the head and the location of the eyes, ears, chin, nose, eyebrows. To make it clearer, I’ll show you how to mark the contours of the face. Let's take, for example, a portrait of a girl.

What head shape does she have? Ovoid? Round? Oval with a square chin?

You can buy Here.

Stretch the pencil in your hand, pointing it towards the model. Mark the distance between the top of your head and your chin on paper. We also note the width. Now put all these values on paper using dots, not forgetting about proportions and scale.

To draw from a photo, measure the parameters with a ruler, mark the expected width and height of the head. Write the shape of the head.

Remember that the width of the head is ¾ of the height. In reality, there may be deviations of 1-2 cm. So, carefully measure the height and width, check their ratio.

The outlines should be light and delicate, barely noticeable. An HB pencil is suitable for this. Now you are ready for the next step.

Many people try to master the art of drawing a portrait, but they fail. Either the nose is swollen, like a pig's, or the eyes are too small. It is important at this stage to compare the standard with the original (model or photo).

Each person has his own characteristics. These could be wide cheekbones, a large bulbous nose, and deep-set eyes. Look closely and notice. How do you usually draw? Where do you start your work?

Reference

The golden rule of portrait painters is the so-called standard. A unique masterpiece, that is, a face, is subsequently sculpted from it.

It incorporated the following components:

The line exactly halfway between the crown of the head and the chin marks the line of the eyes.
The next line runs halfway between the eyebrow line and the end of the chin. This is the nose line.
Divide the section between the nose and chin into three parts. The lower border of the upper third is where the lips are located. It may be slightly higher or lower, it all depends on the characteristics of the person.
To find your eyebrow line, divide your head height by three and a half. Half of the three parts indicate the hairline. The second feature behind it is the eyebrow line. The third feature is the line of the nose.

After you have outlined the oval, mark the protruding elements:

cheekbones;
chin.

Divide your face in half vertically. In the case of a half turn, look at the example.

The line goes through and divides the “egg” in half. One half should be smaller than the other, as it is further away.

Chopping head

In professional art schools, aspiring portrait painters study the so-called “stumping.” This is a human head presented in a simplified version.

We will try to draw a kind of stump of our model in a simple design.

This is the second stage.

Note the person's characteristics:

the thickness of the cheekbones, the falling and protruding parts of the face, a kind of relief;
thickness of the bridge of the nose, base of the nose;
the width and height of the eyes, their location;
thickness and width of lips;
eyebrows, their bend, direction, thickness;
chin shape: triangular, square, etc.

Now, let me show you how to draw eyes.

Spherical mirrors

The eyes are a round sphere. This roundness must be conveyed on the sheet. At the same time, the white of the eye is never left white, but is shaded, adding more color. To make it clear that the eye has a spherical shape.

Finding the eye is quite easy. Divide the width of the head into five parts. The 2nd and 4th parts represent the eyes. But these are the proportions for the frontal view. How to draw eyes in a half-turn?

In this case, you simply mark the same eye socket, notch or temporal part of the head and dance from it. Measure the farthest eye; it is smaller in size than the second one. Measure the distance between the eyes and mark it on paper. Repeat for the other eye as well.

Outline the eye with a quadrangle, marking the width and height with notches.

Take a close look at the model or photo. What eye shape does the original have? How do the width and height of the eye relate?

Sketch line segments showing the position of the eyelids.

At the same time, the lower eyelid is never made dark. Take a closer look at how to depict the thickness of the lower eyelid. It is a shade darker than the whites of the eyes.

Nose

Now let's start creating the plane of the nose. To do this, you need to know several relationships:

Draw lines parallel to each other from the corners of the inner eyelid down. Mark the location of the wings of the nose.
When creating a face in a half turn, the second line coming from the far eye will disappear behind the bridge of the nose.

Construct a trapezoid at the base of the nose, first drawing the lines of the back of the nose. To do this, place a pencil parallel to the vertical axis and remember the angle between the back of the nose and the axis, transfer it to paper.

Lips

The location of the lips can be found like this. If you divide the height of the head into 8 parts, then the fifth line down from the top of the head will be the line of the lips.

Write the mouth as if it were drawn on a cylinder.

The upper lip should be 1/3 of the height of the lips. The width of the lips is equal to the distance between the center of the pupils. Measure in a half turn in the photo and adjust to your scale.

There is another measure of the width of the lips: it is equal to a segment of one and a half eyes.

Ears

Look at the pictures to see how to draw ears. The ear is located between the brow and nasal lines.

In the ¾ portrait the man is depicted with one ear, the other ear is “hidden”. Remember, the ear should be tilted towards the head.

It can be determined by drawing a straight line connecting the jugular cavity and the ear. Or simply attach a pencil to the photo and measure the angle of inclination by eye.

Memo

And some more rules:

If you are painting a portrait of a person from the waist up, identify the axis that bisects the face so that you can determine the location of the eyes, nose and ears, eyebrows, etc. It passes through the jugular cavity or between the collarbones in the center;
The width of the head along the eye line is 2/3 of its height;
The widest part of the head is the basis for finding the width of the lower jaw (¾ of the larger value).

Detailing

The third stage of creating a portrait includes detailed drawing. Remove unnecessary lines, start to achieve similarity with the photo. At the same time, measure the width of the eyes, nose and other parts and compare them with the width of the face. Draw smooth lines and roundness.

The last final stage is shading.

Shade from the dark areas gradually moving to the lightest ones. Lastly, lighten and add highlights to the pupils, tip of the nose and other parts.

If you've never painted a portrait before, do as Van Gogh did - paint yourself! Armed with a sketch pad or even office paper taped to hard cardboard, a Conte pencil or piece of charcoal (a soft pencil will do), and a mirror, sit in front of the mirror and take a close look at your facial features. Arrange your workspace so that the light falls from one side. If you are right-handed, the light source should be to your left and slightly above you.

Find a piece of paper larger than your head so that your drawing is the same size as the subject being portrayed, in this case, yourself. Keep your head level while drawing. Use your eyes, not your head, to look down at the paper. Don't turn your head from side to side. There are several approaches that artists take. I'll start with the approach of my favorite portrait artist, Richard Schmid: look at one of your eyes. Study it carefully. You'll first draw the eye and work your way out from there, matching proportions and taking careful measurements.

See how the upper eyelid relates to the lower. Is there a noticeable crease above the eyeball or not? Are your eyebrows thick or sparse, arched, straight or sloping? Using very light pressure, draw an oval on the paper that roughly represents the proportions and shape of your left eye.

Don't worry about the rest of the head, hair or neck for now, but leave room for them on the paper for later. For the first time, drawing a face is easier if you look directly at the mirror. Most faces are fairly symmetrical, but still not completely symmetrical. Pay attention to the distance from the right to the left eye. Using the width of the eye as a basic unit of measurement, measure the width of the space between the eyes and carefully draw the outline, eyelid and iris of the left eye, then mark the space between the eyes, then draw the outline and details of the right eye. Mark the direction and width of the eyebrows.

Draw a very light vertical line down the center of the space between the eyes, down to the bottom of the chin, and up to the hairline. This will help your drawing remain symmetrical.

Measure a unit of the width of the eye and compare this distance with the distance between the inner corner of the eye and the lower edge of the nose. Make a short, light line at the edge of the nose. Match the width of the eye with the width of the nose. Make marks indicating the width of the nose on either side of the vertical line. Then match the distance between the edge of the nose and the dividing line of the lips. Watch these proportions! Calculating them correctly ensures a good portrait and likeness.

Find the width of your cheekbones and mark them with a light mark, then move towards your ears. Ears are very difficult to draw; they are completely unique for each person. The top of the ear will usually be somewhere around the level of the eyebrows, but again, look carefully before drawing. Every person's face is unique!

Label the features of the chin and jawbone.

Mark the height and width of the hair and carefully draw its outline, adding tone to indicate the lightness or darkness of the hair. Don't worry about the details! When you look at someone's hair, you notice color and shape, not individual hairs. The same should be true in your drawing.

Once you have your proportions outlined, look at the areas of light and shadow on your subject. Lightly shade dark areas to create a sense of dimension. Work on the darkest areas first - usually the iris. Leave a white, curved spot of light on the iris. Notice that the eyeball is curved and that one side of the eyeball is somewhat shaded. Look carefully at the proportions and location of the light spots.

Pay attention to the shape and proportions of the upper and lower eyelids. Don't worry about the eyelashes - they can be outlined slightly with a darker line later.

Define the shape of the skull and the curves of the flesh covering it, gradually shading the sides of the face and jaw, the eye sockets, the depression in the skull above the eyes, then highlight the lighter areas in the tone of the hair.

Lightly shade the shadow side of the nose and try to capture its unique shape, especially the tip. This is another characteristic feature of the face.