MY BEST TIPS FOR DRAWING PENCIL PORTRAITS I'm sometimes asked by students for drawing advice, so have written down my top tips. I've worked out these theories from trial and error as to what makes a good portrait in pencils and I try to constantly keep them in mind and follow them as I draw. I hope you'll find some of them useful.

I think this is the most common mistake people make when doing pencil portraits. I've learnt never EVER to rub the pencil with my fingers when drawing a face or other areas of skin, however tempting it seems! Not only does it produce a dull 'airbrushed' look, but it's also much harder to control the exact tone you want. Instead, when shading skin I use a fairly hard pencil (HB or B) and build up layers of fine, faint shading or hatching. The effect of this is firstly that you create an impression of 'movement' and life, and secondly that rather than seeing a dull grey area of tone, the eye registers tiny specks of the white paper in between the lines which vibrate and create an impression of luminosity. This impression is preserved even in areas of darker shading, for which I'll use softer pencils (from 2B to 9B). Take your time and build up the layers of hatching slowly, and you'll have much more control over what you produce. Click the drawing to enlarge

If you want to read one book on how to draw, this should be it. It has been in print since 1979 and is a real classic, as it teaches you not so much how to draw as how to LOOK. It proposes the idea that most people when trying to draw allow the part of their brain associated with linear reasoning and language to 'jump in' and tell them what it thinks they OUGHT to be drawing, making them less likely to really look. In Edwards' view, artistic ability isn't 'magic' or based entirely on good hand-to-eye coordination! Artists are simply people who seem to know how to suspend this part of their brain activity instinctively.

A good example is the exercise below - the book reproduces this drawing of Igor Stravinsky by Picasso (Musee Picasso, 1920) . It asks you to copy the drawing firstly the right way up, and then upside down. Most people will find that the drawing they did upside down is far more accurate! This is because when the drawing is the wrong way up, your brain will be unable to identify the separate features of the face or parts of the body and therefore to impose any preconceptions about what those things should look like. All you will be able to register instead are abstract lines, and so you are likely to find yourself mentally measuring the distances between them and deciding where they ought to be placed on the page far more accurately. The exercise teaches you that drawing is about constantly mentally measuring, sizing up and comparing shapes and lines. If you aren't doing that, then you aren't likely to produce an accurate drawing.

This is really a good summary of the lessons above, and it's what I try to do when I draw. I aim to entirely forget that I am drawing an eye, nose, mouth and so on and instead try to simply see the image I am copying as an abstract collection of lines and different shapes of light or dark. After I've loosely sketched in the lines of the portrait I will first fill in the pupils of the eyes, as these are almost always the darkest areas of tones that you will see. Then I'll dart around the image looking for all the darkest areas of tones - these may be in the nostrils, or the hair for instance. I find this a useful method as when I next turn my attention to the lighter tones I will have something to compare them to. Sometimes if I'm really stuck and can't see what's wrong I will turn both my portrait and my reference picture upside down! This will usually help me to see exactly which shapes have been drawn or painted incorrectly. As with lines and shapes, try never to make assumptions about areas of light and dark! For example people tend to assume that the whites of the eyes or the teeth will be the brightest parts of the face. In fact these areas are usually a little shadowed, with bright areas of highlights.

Here's a good example of the benefit of trying not to mentally 'name' the parts of the face as you do your portrait and seeing them as separate from each other. Take a look in the mirror at your own mouth - most beginners when drawing a mouth will assume without really looking that both lips end in a clear and linear way when they meet the rest of the skin. In fact, they aren't defined anything like so clearly - you'll notice on your own lip that the thin lip tissue actually blends back into the skin of your chin in quite an uneven way and straggly way. In between the two you may well see an area of lighter pink, intermediate skin that isn't quite lip but is darker in colour than the rest of your skin. Underneath this is where you may see a line - of dark shadow. By thinking of the face as a series of abstract tonal areas and working your way through them methodically, you'd have been much more likely to notice this and to draw it accurately!

I started looking at portraits from the past when doing drawings as props for film and television that had to be drawn in the style of that particular period. However I found that what I learnt from these drawings was also very useful for drawing regular, modern portraits. I was really surprised so see how loose and expressive portraits from several centuries ago could be! This is good catalogue of 18th and 19th century drawings published by the British Museum: The Intimate Portrait by Kim Sloan and Steven Lloyd

As well as hatching, rather than rubbing, pencil marks, another trick I learnt was to vary the amount of detail you put into different parts of the portrait. It was very common for these artists to put a great deal of detail into the face (where likeness is the most important), then a little less in the neck and hair and even less in the arms, shoulders and chest which are often left extremely sketchy and unshaded. This makes sense to me as it draws the attention of the viewer to the face, which should be the focus of the portrait.

Historical portraits also helped to teach me a lesson that took me a while to learn; that where drawing faces is concerned, less is absolutely more!  This doesn't mean you should necessarily try to avoid having some quite dark shadow, just that you should also try to leave plenty of the face completely unshaded and just plain white paper. You don't need to cover every part of the face, in grey pencil shading. It seems a little counter-intuitive at first, but always seems to result in a more delicate and subtle portrait. Below left: Elizabeth Gaskell, drawing after chalk portrait by George Richmond and below right: Thomas Campbell by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

I use this all the time particularly when drawing hair, not just to rub out mistakes (although it's useful for that too!) but also for creating highlights. It means that I can build up the tones in layers, starting with the darkest areas, and then use the eraser to rub away the pencil where the light hits the hair, just as if I was using paint and adding the white highlights last. Hair is the one place that I do sometimes rub the pencil marks  with a tissue (NOT my fingers!) to create a smoother effect (I think of it as being a bit like 'brushing' the hair) and then I use the eraser to pick out the brightest points of light on top.

This really will make a difference. Try to get a good quality of cartridge paper to draw on which can take plenty of rubbing out. I always use either Derwent or Faber-Castell pencils - cheaper ones will be less consistent in their grade, will break more and may even scratch your paper. You can read more about Drawing Materials that I like to use by clicking the link, or see a review of different Pencil Brands

home | pencil portraits | oil portraits | pet portraits |  customer feedback
commissioning a portrait | prices | biography | contact me | links