Course Highlights


Drawing Portraits

Considered to be the most difficult of subjects, portrait drawing is an area that will require much practice, patience and time to develop your skills. For many students, portraits can create a certain degree of anxiety because they require the most detail and a solid grasp of shading techniques. Achieving a likeness is the ultimate goal but it will take a considerable period of trial and error. Make sure your expectations are reasonable and remember that successful drawing is simply the steady improvement of ones skills, resulting in fewer mistakes with every sketch.

To ease the process, be sure to narrow your focus. Practice each facial feature independently. For instance, work on your ability to render texture and shape to the eyebrows or dedicate a session to rendering the form of the cheek bones using cross-hatching. Do not make the mistake of tackling entire portraits when first starting out. This is setting yourself up to fail and you will miss out on the many satisfying achievements of each stepping stone.


Other pages of interest

Drawing the aged and overweight
Drawing babies, infants and adolescents
Drawing portraits
Portrait drawing 2
Facial features

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