Portrait Drawing HOW TO, A Step-By-Step Drawing Demonstration - 4 Essentials Steps!

This portrait drawing was done for the art challenge in September and I promised to show 

my drawing demo steps to you.

So here below, are photos of the 4 essential steps in my portrait drawing. 

Step 1) Geometric Shapes and Angle of the Gesture: 

Here I have lightly sketched the oval shape for the head, and the overall angle of the body moving diagonally from upper left to lower right of the page. --The diagonal provides strength to the composition.
Once I felt good about all the shape relationships I continued to progress

from large shapes to the smaller shapes

and blocked in the facial features, more clearly, now .

Step 2) Vertical and Horizontal Checks: 

 In this step, it is critical to get the largest shapes possible decided upon
 and to slowly get the proportions correct.

 A helpful tip is to check how things line up vertically as well as horizontally. 

What I mean is, if you put a vertical imaginary line along the hairline,

 it would be in line with the outside of the arm and shadow shapes of the skirt.  

And an example of lining up horizontally, would be the top of the shoulder lines up with the outside corner of the eye.

Step 3)  In the Beginning Soft and Loose:  

 So in the beginning there is a lot of checking relationships back and forth, erasing, correcting and making sure the foundation of the drawing is correct. 

But in this stage I kept the lines very soft and loose, and easy to erase. Many of the extra lines just get covered up in the shading. So the drawing, at this time, is a very loose and changing sketch before the shading is started. Once I have decided for sure on the correct proportions and lines, then I can darken those lines and pursue the shading more seriously.

Step 4) Darks are Key!: 

 Next I block in the values or shading and try to find the darkest darks.

Here I am progressing with the shading and paying close attention to seeing the value shapes of darks and lights.  Working on the values and keeping the darks consistent throughout the drawing is key.

More shading is put in and I deepen the dark values where they need it. Then finally

much attention is given to the edges of the value shapes. I ask myself, are the edges crisp and hard or fuzzy and soft?  So a lot of sensitive adjusting to the edges happens at this time. Generally, most of the focused or crisper edges are at the focal point, which is the face and the diagonal created by the arm and legs. 

And the portrait is finished!


So there it is!  I hope you found this demo helpful. Would you like to see more step-by -step demos?
Don't hesitate to drop me a line.....
Thank you for visiting!