How to draw a portrait in pencil step by step for beginners: tips and tricks

Do not know how to draw a portrait in pencil step by step for beginners? Even a young artist can cope with this task. Read useful tips and tricks that will help you to properly determine both the choice of sheet size, and the way you do the work. Have patience and inspiration.

What will be required

If you decide to study information on how to draw a portrait in pencil step by step for beginners, then you are going to take this work seriously, so you should prepare everything you need beforehand. For drawing you need the following:

• A sheet of the appropriate format (A4 or A3, the first one - optimal for the first experiment).
• A set of simple pencils of different softness.
• Eraser.
• Sharpener or knife for sharpening slips.
• A soft stitch is a "clap" that allows you to correct mistakes when hatching without damaging the paper.
• Ruler for building markup.
• Transparent film, if you transfer the image from the photo.

Of course, creating a portrait is not an easy task even for real artists. People with experience work using only a pencil and their skills. It is acceptable for a beginner to make lines of construction along a ruler and even to draw an image from a photo by cells.

Ways to work

To create portraits with a simple pencil, you must first draw a contour diagram on the sheet that copies the features of your model. This can be done like this:

1. If you make a portrait from life, that is, before you sit a living person, mark on the sheet the contour of the face, the guiding lines and the main dimensions of the eyes, lips and nose. If you doubt your abilities, use a ruler. Already on the markup, draw the elements themselves.
2. When you have a photo as a template, you can superimpose a transparent film with a ball-grided grid with cells, for example, 1 cm. You should build the same matrix on your sheet, with the side of the square retained or made larger. In the second case, the portrait will increase in the corresponding number of times relative to the photo. After drawing the grid, you are directly drawing the outline, analyzing how the lines are relative to the guides. Carry on the sheet as much as possible. The more cells you have, the more accurately you can draw the outline.
3. Another method is for lazy people, who own a computer. Process the photo in the photo editor, turning it into a contour image, print out the template on the sheet and translate the linear drawing through the glass onto your portrait sheet.

As you can see, you have several options, how to more accurately convey the proportions of the face, but more or less professional is only the first, except for advice to use the newcomer line.

How to draw a portrait in pencil step by step for beginners

So, you have applied a contour markup. It is worth noting that the sheet format is better to choose for portrait vertical and position the face roughly in the center so that there is free space on all sides. At the bottom, it's better if the figure ends just below the shoulder line. Then work like this:

1. Analyze where on the face will be dark places. From them, and start hatching. Glare - the lightest areas, do not stroke at all, at least, first.
2. Fill in the middle tones with dashes. Try to see all objects as three-dimensional details (eye, nose, lips). They are not in the same plane, so on each element there are lighter and darker parts.
3. Stroke your hair in such a way as to show that the head is bulky. After that, apply strokes that show the structure of the hair. They are better placed in the foreground, and on the contour, adjoining to a background, not to put superfluous details.
4. Last of all, work your shoulders and clothes. The background for the first time is left white or make a smooth gray transition from the contour of the head to the edges of the sheet. If you sketch the entire sheet completely, there is a risk that the portrait will merge with the background and the work will turn into a continuous "carpet".
5. If you completely lost glare, carefully remove the shading in these places with an eraser, and preferably a special nag or ordinary mackinel of white bread.

You can prepare a frame for your painting.

Portrait of a pencil on a photo

If you have a flat picture in front of you, it's much easier to work with it than with a living nature. It is enough to redraw the contours of the cells, as described earlier, and perform the entire sequence of actions from the previous section. Stages of work are no different in these two ways.

So, you learned how to draw a portrait in pencil step by step for beginners. This is not a very difficult task, especially if you use some tricks in your work. Take a pencil, a sheet of paper, an eraser and start a practical lesson.