How do you draw a good portrait?

Question: How do you draw a good portrait!?

What is important to pay attention to when drawing a portrait of someone!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

A portrait artist must be good at differentiating between what one knows about the head and body (two eyes, a nose, mouth, etc!.) and what one sees when drawing the sitter!.

If you are drawing from life you must learn how to block in the basic shapes first, to make sure when you are adding details later you are not adding them to an out-of-porportioned, mis-shapen, or mis-aligned face or body!. Life drawing can be better for learning and the product can tend to have more 'aliveness' to it!. Be sure to have a light source that is not straight on, but casts some shadows on the face, as these will lend form and real-ness to it!. !. !.

Eye, nose, and mouth placement, as well as face shape, are most important to getting a good likeness!. From there, making sure the mouth is the proper width, the eyes and brows are level on the face and perpendicular to the nose, and that the mouth is not too low!. It is very hard to correct issues with the features once you have begun tonal shading or detail work!

The general shape of the hair is important, but getting the "hair-do" just right is not! Hair can be suggested by broad, flat strokes alone if it is placed properly and follows the correct contours!. If the hair is blonde or very light, leave a lot of paper showing and just accent the dark shaded areas!. Leave highlights on dark hair for shine and contour!.

The mouth can make or break a portrait, so sketch it in lightly so that you can make adjustments as you work!. I almost always work the hardest to get the line between the upper and lower lips drawn accurately, as the outside edges of the lips really need only be suggested!. (Otherwise your subject will look like he or she is wearing gaudy lipstick!) Heavy lines should be reserved for the shadowy parts, and this includes the lip-line!.

The eyes should be suggested as elongated ovals to begin, as this will tell you if they are set correctly and sitting at the right angle for the face!. I darken the top line ( the upper lash line) and the center of the iris first to make sure they are focused correctly (not cross-eyed or wall-eyed) and i wait until late in the finishing to address the lower lid, as often the drawing does not require that we place a hard line there!. Eyelashes and eyebrows are suggested with feathered strokes, to avoid them looking pasted on or fake!.

If the ears are showing, be sure they are approximately level with the tip of the nose!. Too high or too low and they will make your portrait look like an alien species!. And pay attention to the length of the neck, slope of the shoulders, and where the shoulders intersect visually with the back of the neck!.

If you are prone to working from photos, avoid photos taken with a flash, as they flatten out faces and features and make it nearly impossible to get as good a likeness!. This is why there are so many portraits of old done by windows!. !. !. !. the light!Www@QuestionHome@Com

when drawing a portrait or any drawing of a person you need to watch out for a number of things!. if drawing boys, then watch out for their lips because boys lips arent suppossed to look like girl lips!. then you need to watch out for their ears because an artist should know what an ear looks like!. you also need to look out for eyes and eyebrows!. some artists do not know how to do an eye properly and some artists dont even use eyebrows, and eyebrows are very important to a persons emotional apperance!. hair is also very important to a person because hair is stringy and if you draw it that way will make it look good or bad, you deside!. on last thing is the nose because the nose is supposed to pop out and if you do not do that, then your drawing will look awful!. hope i helped!Www@QuestionHome@Com

break it down,first get 1 eye perfect
practice the nose another drawing of the mouth
do not use ruler on whole face it will be to stiff,
the distance beween the eyes is lenght of one
eye, bottem of the nose equals the bottem the ears
make sure eye puples line up, free hand the rest
of the face!!
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well, im in art and (i know this sounds old, but it actually works) you have to draw what you SEE!. So many people think they know what a face looks like or what colour things are, but when you actually LOOK at them they turn out to be totally different!.
;PWww@QuestionHome@Com