How to Draw a Realistic Portrait

Drawing a realistic human portrait is probably one of the most difficult tasks for any artist. Even professional, well-known artists experience difficulties with drawing realistic portraits, not to speak of art students and amateurs who love drawing, enjoy the process and want to learn how to draw portraits.

So what does one need to draw portraits besides desire and a little bit of drawing talent?

learn the basics of drawing;
learn the basic proportions of a human face;
lots of practice!

In order to learn basics of drawing you can purchase and read specialized literature discussing drawing techniques, styles, tools etc.

As to the basic proportions of a human face, they are the following:

the distance from the chin to the eyes equals the distance from the eyes to the crown of the head (do not forget that you do not have to take into consideration a haircut in this case);
the distance from the hairline to the eyebrows equals the distance from the eyebrows to the tip of the nose and at the same time equals the distance from the tip of the nose to the chin;
the distance between eyes is actually the length of an eye itself;
the width of the nose is the distance between the eyes;
the length of the mouth is the distance between the eye pupils;
the length of ears equals the distance from the brows to the mouth line;
when drawing a half face (profile), the distance from the eye level to the chin equals the distance from the outer corner of an eye to the end of an ear.

The above face proportions are classical for an adult and can slightly vary depending on individual facial peculiarities.

The most common errors in realistic portrait drawing are caused by the failure to observe the above proportions. These errors are usually as follows:

a truncated skull;
too large eyes;
too small nose;
too small mouth;
too thin neck;
too small ears.

However such deviations in classical portrait proportions can be deliberately made for caricatures and cartoons drawing, and being able to make such "correct errors" in this case is also art as it is not an easy thing to accentuate and emphasize necessary details of a portrait in order to create a good looking caricature which at the same time allows model recognizing.

When drawing a realistic portrait, one must pay special attention to the following details of the model's face:

whether the lip corners are tilted up or down;
which lip is wider;
which internal or external corners of the eyes are higher;
shape of the face and cheekbones;
strands and hair around the face as they must be drawn very thoroughly and with as much details as possible.

The most important in learning to draw is constant practicing which is a must for improvement your drawing technique. Practicing a lot, you will soon notice that your portraits get more and more beautiful and resembling the model. Good luck in your learning to draw realistic portraits!

Igor Lukyanov is a Ukrainian illustrator and artist. You are kindly invited to visit his personal blog of an illustrator and artist as well as his blog of a fashion illustrator if you want to learn how to draw and enjoy his illustrations, portraits, freehand drawings and other kinds of visual art.

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