How To Draw A Portrait | Drawing Tutorials Online Blog

Seeing The Head As A Box

by Matthew | Oct 29, 2019 | The Blog, Video Critiques

Arjun consistently uploads his work for a critique every week. In this week’s critique, I help out Arjun with seeing how to fit a box to a head. You might ask, why even bother with this technique, what’s the point?

I think what Arjun is practicing is super important. He is trying to understand how to see and decipher the surface planes of the head. Placing a portrait within a box is the most primitive way to see the surface planes. It’s the most macro, front and side.

There is a multitude of surface planes on the head. With portraits, it’s important to know where the big surface plane shifts occur. They occur at the temple and cheekbone, otherwise known as the Zygomaticofacial foramen. I know, anatomical terms, ugh.

Understanding where to see and place the big surface planes will most certainly help you to improve the way you draw a three-dimensional portrait. It’s even better when you light the portrait whereas the front planes catch the light, and the side planes are in shadow.

Lastly, trying to place a perfectly geometric box around an organic head just does not compute for a lot of artists. That is why I suggest drawing curved edged, organic boxes instead of right-angled boxes.

The human body is not synthetic, it’s super curvy. In other words, round all of your corners.

Thank you so much for checking out Arjun’s critique. You can check out his Instagram page @AKTracer.

Five Tips For Drawing A Portrait Likeness

by Matthew | Oct 22, 2019 | The Blog, Video Critiques | 1 comment

I recently completed a critique of Arjun’s portrait drawing. Arjun is a member of Drawing Tutorials Online. He is a super hard worker and is improving immensely as of late.

Here are five tips to help you capture a likeness the next time you work on a portrait drawing.

First, you will want to pay attention to the centerline of the head. This will help you tremendously in terms of measuring both sides of the face. It will aid you in getting the correct angle of the head.

Second, do your best to look out for the three angles that make up the lower jaw bone. The mandible is an important structure. It acts as a frame for the lower half of the head. Do not overlook the jawline.

Third, avoid using high-contrast value shifts within the model’s face. Especially when drawing from photo-reference that has soft lighting. Extreme value shifts within the light will make your drawing look too patchy.

Fourth, tilts will most certainly help you capture the model’s likeness. I like to look at the tilt of the eyes. You can also use the tilt of the mouth from corner to corner. This is often overlooked.

Fifth, see the whites of the eyes as shapes that you must draw accurately. Yes, easier said than done, I understand. Take some time to study the shapes of the whites of the eyes. This will help you capture the model’s likeness.

I want to thank Arjun for uploading his work to Drawing Tutorials Online‘s member critique gallery on a regular basis. His hard work is really paying off.

Check out Arjun’s instagram @aktracer.

Thinking Technique – Drawing In Your Own Style

by Matthew | Sep 26, 2019 | Drawing Tutorials, The Blog | 2 comments

There is a time and a place to draw certain techniques physically on the paper. While other times you just will want to draw in your style. The key is to think about certain techniques as you are drawing in your style.

In terms of practice, I believe its a must to draw techniques in their purest form. I have my students do this in class. During the classes morning session, I have the students draw pure technique.

However, during the afternoon session, I have them develop their style of drawing. The point of this post is to get you thinking about the difference between style and technique.
If you just draw a portrait or the figure in traditional techniques, your drawing will not have their voice.

Make sure you practice both every week. Cultivate your style while practicing new techniques. This practice will serve you in the long run.

Thanks so much for taking the time to watch. Let me know your thoughts.

Shapes Equal Likeness

by Matthew | Jul 30, 2019 | Video Critiques

I wanted to share with you Michael’s critique. This week Michael shared one of his drawings in our member critique gallery. He had mentioned that he might have chosen the wrong photo.

I mentioned to Michael at the beginning of the critique that the photo was a good one. It’s good because it has some pretty good shadow shapes to cling onto. Michael is off to great start with his drawing, he just needs to focus on shapes.

If I had to give one piece of advice to any artist who aspires to draw portraits with a likeness, it would be to focus on drawing shapes, not things. Don’t draw the eyelid, draw the shadow shape around the eyelid.

Do not draw the lips with an outline, draw the shadow shape that makes up the upper lip and the shadow shape under the lower lip. In order to capture a person’s likeness, you must capture and draw their shapes accurately.

Now some would say that I’ve said this before, many times. Yes, I have because it works. When it comes to portrait drawing you want to be repetitive with certain things. One, always work from a photo that has good light and shade. Two, capture the likeness not through outlines but through shapes.

The modeling comes after you have blocked in light and shadow shapes. You do not need to learn fifty portrait drawing techniques, instead, you just need to master a few.

Drawing Tutorials Online is coming up on eleven years in business helping artists pursue their passion for drawing. Now is a great time to join, I am doubling down on making the website even better with shorter more instructive lessons. I look forward to helping you improve your artwork!.

How To Draw The Ear

by Matthew | Jul 18, 2019 | Drawing Tutorials, The Blog

I recently just finished uploading the last lesson in a course titled ‘How To Draw The Features Of The Face. This last lesson focuses on the ear.

Drawing the ear can certainly be tricky. There a few techniques that you really want to keep in mind.

First, think of the entire ear as an oval. All of the detail of the ear is housed in that simple oval.

Second, the details located inside of that oval, those details are basically cylinders. To be more specific they are cylinders that are curved. What makes these curvey cylinders hard to draw is the type of light that is hitting them.

I always place my light source above and to the side of my subjects, in essence creating form light.

Third, shade in the shadow shapes of the ear. Keep the shadow shapes more of a middle tone, do not go too dark. I learned my lesson the hard way a long time ago while working on a book cover painting. Let’s just say the ears were a bit too dark.

Ears are very translucent, shade the shadows with a middle tone. This will allow for a glow in the shadow.

Fourth and last, implement the modeling factors to really promote the three-dimensional quality of the Helix and the Anti-Helix.

If you have any questions or comments leave them below. I’d love the hear from you.