Drawing a portrait with a pencil step by step for beginners. How to draw a portrait with a pencil step by step

In order to fully learn how to draw portraits with a pencil, you need to study the basics of drawing and human proportions, and also devote enough time to practice.

If you are new to drawing, then you should not immediately “throw yourself into the pool headlong” and try to master the entire portrait. First you need to get good at performing individual parts: eyes, nose, mouth as well as ears and neck. You can learn how to draw all these elements in separate lessons on our website.

A step-by-step description of a girl's portrait in pencil.

Stage one.

When starting to draw a portrait with a pencil, take a good look at the person being portrayed, determine the shape of the face and cheekbones, trace the inclination of the lips and determine which of them is wider, how the outer and inner corners of the eyes are located relative to each other. Then we draw an oval suitable in shape for a particular person.

Stage two.

We divide our oval into four parts. To do this, draw vertical and horizontal lines strictly in the middle. Next, we divide the resulting horizontal parts of the lines in half again, marking them with small serifs. Bottom part vertical line divide into five equal parts. Remember that these lines are of an auxiliary nature and when our pencil portrait of a girl is almost ready, they will need to be erased, so do not put too much pressure on the pencil when drawing them.

Stage three.

We place the center of each eyeball directly above the dividing points of the horizontal line. We draw the line of the base of the nose at the second notch on top of the lower part of the vertical axis, and the line of the mouth - in the area of ​​​​the second notch from the bottom.

Stage four.

We draw the line of the upper eyelid and draw the lips. It should be remembered that the distance between the eyes is equal to the length of one eye. The earlobes should be level with the demolition. Use sketch lines to mark the outline of the hair.

Stage five.

We begin to draw a more detailed portrait of a person in pencil step by step. We depict the upper border of the upper eyelid and the visible part of the lower eyelid. Add a few eyelashes to each upper eyelid. Draw the lines of the eyebrows and bridge of the nose.

Stage six.

To give volume to our portrait with a simple pencil shade lips and hair, highlighting dark and bright places, add shadows.

Thus, if you draw several faces, you will see that they are different from each other. Continue drawing the portrait with a pencil step by step until you achieve maximum resemblance.

Find a model or photo. Make sure the photos you choose match your drawing skills. If you are just starting to draw, then you should not take a photo with too much complex shadows, or a photo taken from an unusual angle. Start simple. If you already have experience in drawing portraits, you can try something more challenging to test your skills.

  • Decide whether you want to draw a man or a woman. As a rule, male portraits more saturated shadows; Whether it will be easier or not is up to you to decide. Women, in turn, have more long hair- some people think that drawing a lot of hair is boring or difficult.
  • Decide whether you want to draw a young or old person. The faces of older people are more interesting to draw, but also more difficult due to the additional lines and textures - however, thanks to them, the portrait turns out to be expressive. It is easier to draw very young children, but if you are used to drawing adults, it may be more difficult for you.
  • Draw general outline faces and heads. To do this, take a harder pencil, 2H (in the domestic marking 2T), and if you do not have pencils of different softness, then use a mechanical pencil. These pencils produce finer, lighter lines that are easier to erase if you need to make changes to your sketch.

    • Next, sketch out the main facial features - eyes, nose in a few lines, ears and lips, but do not draw shadows.
  • Don't invent anything. Draw only what you see. If there are no bags under your eyes, don't draw them. If you only see 2-3 lines around the nose, don't add more to make it stand out. Adding details that don't exist is quite risky because they may not be true and ruin the image you are copying.

    • You can later add details that aren't visible in the photo if you don't want your portrait to be an exact copy.
  • Start drawing shadows. As a rule, this process is most frightening for those who draw a portrait, but it is thanks to the shadows that the object in the picture becomes “alive.”

    • Identify the lightest and darkest parts of the face. If you want the portrait to look three-dimensional and more dramatic, make the lightest parts as light as possible (work as lightly as possible). hard pencil), and dark ones - as dark as possible (with the softest pencil).
  • Make the most of your observation skills. Shadows and facial features will look realistic and photo-like if you constantly stop and compare your drawing to the photo. There is no need to compare too scrupulously, especially if you are just starting to draw, because any portrait will never be an absolute copy of a photograph.

    • Don't forget: to draw nice portrait, you want to capture the model's unique features and facial expressions. If your model has a fairly large nose, don't try to make it thinner. If your model's eyebrows are thin and whitish, don't try to make them fuller. A portrait should convey the appearance of a real person, and not perfect performance about him.
  • Hello, dear readers of my blog. I’m in touch with you, Timur Mustaev. Quite recently, I started to get interested in pencil drawing. My friend is so good at it that I asked him for a couple of lessons. I also asked him to write an article specifically for beginners in drawing, like me, where all the stages of drawing are described in detail. Today, in this article, he shares his tips and secrets.

    Before I start, I want to tell you the secret of how my friend learned to draw. He took the video course" Drawing a portrait from a photograph"and the result is obvious. Moreover, the author of the course promises a full refund if you don’t learn how to draw. But as my friend says, this is simply not possible! The course is very clear and everything is shown with examples.

    Drawing a portrait from a photograph

    Drawing something is not easy, but the process of mastering the technique of creating a portrait will go much faster if you take a few tips from this article.

    After all, as it happens, you seem to draw, erase, draw again, waste “tons” of paper, but there are no results. What is the reason for such failures?


    The thing is that, when trying to draw the eyes, nose or other parts of the model, beginners lose sight of the fact that the picture should be painted from the whole to the particular.

    How to draw a portrait with a pencil step by step for beginners? Moving from simple to complex. Let me give you an example. Remember how a man emerges from the fog? At first, vague outlines appear. As the haze disappears, facial features become clearer. It should also be on paper.

    There are three angles: profile, full face and half-turn - the so-called three-quarters.

    Beginners can be advised to try painting a portrait of a person sitting in three-quarter or side view. Then, when the technique of creating a face in a half-turn has been perfected, it will be possible to do more complex techniques, write the face from the front.

    However, if you believe in your abilities, you can try to draw a person sitting upright from life.

    Where to start?

    The frame or basis of the portrait is the oval of the head and the location of the eyes, ears, chin, nose, eyebrows. To make it clearer, I’ll show you how to mark the contours of the face. Let's take, for example, a portrait of a girl.

    What head shape does she have? Ovoid? Round? Oval with a square chin?


    You can buy Here.

    Stretch the pencil in your hand, pointing it towards the model. Mark the distance between the top of your head and your chin on paper. We also note the width. Now put all these values ​​on paper using dots, not forgetting about proportions and scale.

    To draw from a photo, measure the parameters with a ruler, mark the expected width and height of the head. Write the shape of the head.

    Remember that the width of the head is ¾ of the height. In reality, there may be deviations of 1-2 cm. So, carefully measure the height and width, check their ratio.

    The outlines should be light and delicate, barely noticeable. An HB pencil is suitable for this. Now you are ready for the next step.

    Many people try to master the art of drawing a portrait, but they fail. Either the nose is swollen, like a pig's, or the eyes are too small. It is important at this stage to compare the standard with the original (model or photo).

    Each person has his own characteristics. These could be wide cheekbones, a large bulbous nose, and deep-set eyes. Look closely and notice. How do you usually draw? Where do you start your work?


    Reference

    The golden rule of portrait painters is the so-called standard. A unique masterpiece, that is, a face, is subsequently sculpted from it.

    It incorporated the following components:

    1. The line exactly halfway between the crown of the head and the chin marks the line of the eyes.
    2. The next line runs halfway between the eyebrow line and the end of the chin. This is the nose line.
    3. Divide the section between the nose and chin into three parts. The lower border of the upper third is where the lips are located. It may be slightly higher or lower, it all depends on the characteristics of the person.
    4. To find your eyebrow line, divide your head height by three and a half. Half of the three parts indicate the hairline. The second feature behind it is the eyebrow line. The third feature is the line of the nose.

    After you have outlined the oval, mark the protruding elements:

    • cheekbones;
    • chin.

    Divide your face in half vertically. In the case of a half turn, look at the example.

    The line goes through and divides the “egg” in half. One half should be smaller than the other, as it is further away.

    Chopping head

    In professional art schools Beginning portrait painters study the so-called “stumping.” This is a human head presented in a simplified version.

    We will try to draw a kind of stump of our model in a simple design.

    This is the second stage.

    Note the person's characteristics:

    • the thickness of the cheekbones, the falling and protruding parts of the face, a kind of relief;
    • thickness of the bridge of the nose, base of the nose;
    • the width and height of the eyes, their location;
    • thickness and width of lips;
    • eyebrows, their bend, direction, thickness;
    • chin shape: triangular, square, etc.

    Now, let me show you how to draw eyes.

    Spherical mirrors

    The eyes are a round sphere. This roundness must be conveyed on the sheet. At the same time, the white of the eye is never left white, but is shaded, adding more color. To make it clear that the eye has a spherical shape.

    Finding the eye is quite easy. Divide the width of the head into five parts. The 2nd and 4th parts represent the eyes. But these are the proportions for the frontal view. How to draw eyes in a half-turn?

    In this case, you simply mark the same eye socket, notch or temporal part of the head and dance from it. Measure the farthest eye; it is smaller in size than the second one. Measure the distance between the eyes and mark it on paper. Repeat for the other eye as well.

    Outline the eye with a quadrangle, marking the width and height with notches.

    Take a close look at the model or photo. What eye shape does the original have? How do the width and height of the eye relate?

    Sketch line segments showing the position of the eyelids.

    At the same time, the lower eyelid is never made dark. Take a closer look at how to depict the thickness of the lower eyelid. It is a shade darker than the whites of the eyes.

    Nose

    Now let's start creating the plane of the nose. To do this, you need to know several relationships:

    1. Swipe from the corners inner eyelid down lines parallel to each other. Mark the location of the wings of the nose.
    2. When creating a face in a half-turn, the second line coming from the far eye will disappear behind the bridge of the nose.

    Construct a trapezoid at the base of the nose, first drawing the lines of the back of the nose. To do this, place a pencil parallel to the vertical axis and remember the angle between the back of the nose and the axis, transfer it to paper.

    Lips

    The location of the lips can be found like this. If you divide the height of the head into 8 parts, then the fifth line down from the top of the head will be the line of the lips.

    Write the mouth as if it were drawn on a cylinder.

    The upper lip should be 1/3 of the height of the lips. The width of the lips is equal to the distance between the center of the pupils. Measure in a half turn in the photo and adjust to your scale.

    There is another measure of the width of the lips: it is equal to a segment of one and a half eyes.

    Ears

    Look at the pictures to see how to draw ears. The ear is located between the brow and nasal lines.

    In the ¾ portrait the man is depicted with one ear, the other ear is “hidden”. Remember, the ear should be tilted towards the head.

    It can be determined by drawing a straight line connecting the jugular cavity and the ear. Or simply attach a pencil to the photo and measure the angle of inclination by eye.

    Memo

    And some more rules:

    1. If you are painting a portrait of a person from the waist up, identify the axis that bisects the face so that you can determine the location of the eyes, nose and ears, eyebrows, etc. It passes through the jugular cavity or between the collarbones in the center;
    2. The width of the head along the eye line is 2/3 of its height;
    3. The most wide part of the head is the basis for finding the width of the lower jaw (¾ of the larger value).

    Detailing

    The third stage of creating a portrait includes detailed drawing. Remove unnecessary lines, start to achieve similarity with the photo. At the same time, measure the width of the eyes, nose and other parts and compare them with the width of the face. Draw smooth lines, roundness.

    Last The final stage- shading.

    Shade from the dark areas gradually moving to the lightest ones. Lastly, lighten and add highlights to the pupils, tip of the nose and other parts.

    The picture is ready.

    Finally, I want to tell you that portraits can be without shading. For example, a linear portrait uses visual medium line.

    See how to draw a girl.

    When there is a desire to draw something with a pencil, we are driven by our mood, imagination, inspiration and associations. Of course, every novice artist remains satisfied if he successfully drew what he wanted and is satisfied with the result, and strangers understand what he wanted to convey. However, there are situations when artists find themselves in the place of the main character of Exupery’s work “The Little Prince” Pilot. Having drawn a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant, he was outraged that those around him thought: “This is a wonderful hat, not a boa constrictor!” This situation is relevant among most beginning artists. And so that you don’t end up in the place of the Pilot from “ The Little Prince", we will show you how to convey your plans with a pencil so that you get a recognizable result.

    When drawing various items Certain difficulties arise, but drawing a recognizable portrait is one sheer difficulty for many. In this lesson I will show you how to draw a portrait step by step without unnecessary complex designs.

    What you will need:

    • a simple pencil with a hardness from H to 2H;
    • a simple pencil with a hardness from B to 8B;
    • paper;
    • eraser.
    • Take a pencil with a hardness from H to 2H. Divide the sheet horizontally into two parts so that the bottom is almost twice as large as the top. At the intersection of this division, draw two straight lines to place the eyes between them. By the way, the distance between the eyes is equal to the length of one eye (everything said is illustrated in the picture).

    • Spend two straight lines from the corners of the eyes down to indicate the boundaries of the width of the nose. Draw the eyelids and eyebrow shape.

    • Drawing a portrait with a pencil is not difficult if you follow our examples in pictures and recommendations. We move on and draw the rest of the nose, marking the lips.

    • Now outline the approximate boundaries of the forehead and the contours of the face as a whole. In order to avoid unnecessary mistakes, measure by eye, for example, with a pencil, how many times the height of the forehead will fit in the distance (plane) from the eyebrows to the lips. If you are painting a portrait of a specific person, then you can measure something with a pencil at arm's length, closing one eye, focusing either on the pencil or on the object itself. If we're talking about about a portrait from a photograph, then you can take measurements either by applying a pencil to the photograph, or by also raising your hand. When it becomes clear, for example, that the distance between the eyes will fit the length of one eye, then you check these parameters in your drawing using a pencil.

    Advice: You can apply a similar method of measurement to any element in the drawing.

    • You are probably wondering: how to draw a portrait of a person step by step so that he seems to come to life. To do this, we move on to the next stage in our work - we take a simple pencil with a hardness from B to 8B. With this we begin to draw the eye area, namely: start with the pupil, but do not forget to leave highlights on the eyes - white, unpainted dots (they create the effect of volume and naturalness of the picture). Darken the corners and draw a dark line in the eyelash area. Draw the main shadows around the eyes. BUT! Do not press too hard on the pencil.

    • Sharpen the pencil you used to draw the shadows well and use light but sparse strokes to draw hairs on the eyebrows. And here, too, you need to follow the laws of light and shadow: when drawing the lower part of the eyebrow, press the pencil harder, in this way a shadow effect will be created; in the middle part and on the sides, try not to put too much pressure on the pencil and make the strokes lighter. At this stage, we also begin to draw a shadow in the nose area. Here you need to be especially careful, because the shadow on the nose creates its shape. So follow the example in the picture.

    • To draw a portrait yourself, you need to have perseverance, so we hope that you are not tired and continue to make the portrait three-dimensional! Let's move on to drawing the shadow on the lips: the lightest part is the middle of the lower lip, and the darkest is the area under it.

    In order to take a closer look at an example of how to draw lips and a nose, look at our other articles devoted to this: “, .

    • The time has come to draw the hairstyle. For some this task is difficult, but for others it is not. One way or another, we will tell you how to draw hair so that it appears most believable in a portrait! In order to beautifully draw a portrait of a girl, it is important for novice artists to remember: 50% of the success of your work depends on drawing the hair. And we are not talking about the main hairstyle and curls, but even about the small hairs that you see near the forehead. The roots start a little higher from them long curls. To draw the hair, we must sharpen the pencil again (B-8B). Here we can no longer make strokes at different angles - each line must follow the growth of the hair and the shape of the hairstyle. From the roots of the hair the hair rises a little (and therefore the line too), and then we make not just straight down strokes, but as if we are drawing them in waves. The places where the curls intersect should be darkened (in order to create a volume effect). It is very important to also draw the hairs that stray from the hairstyle. To do this, we again sharpen the same pencil and carefully, with a quick movement, draw the hairs that naturally stick out from the hairstyle.

    Why is it important to do this with a quick movement of the hand: the slower we draw the lines, the more unnatural they will look due to irregularities. After all, even a heartbeat or our breathing can prevent us from drawing a straight line with a pencil..

    When making messy hair, the main thing is not to overdo it. After doing the hair work, add shadows on the neck, as well as wherever the hair lays on top.

    Well, I showed you how to draw a portrait of a person for beginners. I hope this photo lesson was useful for you and will help you get rid of your unloved ones. difficult stages drawing portraits. In the article, I did not focus on the detail of drawing the eyes, nose and lips, because this is what previous articles were devoted to.

    Subscribe to groups on social networks and to my channel in YouTube. Stay up to date with new lessons!

    Probably every child loves to draw. It's exciting exciting activity, in which children can express themselves and reveal themselves as individuals. As they grow older, the drawings of little artists also change.

    They become meaningful, childish carelessness is replaced realistic images. Perhaps it's time to teach children how to draw a portrait. The right approach will give a good result, because drawing a portrait step by step is not at all difficult.

    Step by step instructions

    Once you are sure that the children are in the right mood, you can start creating. To do this, you will need to prepare a sheet of paper, a well-sharpened pencil and an eraser, with which you can eliminate minor errors in the future masterpiece, completed in stages.

    Let's draw a portrait step by step:

    • To begin, take a sheet of paper and mark its center. Then we draw an oval of the future face. It should resemble an inverted egg. After this, the oval will need to be divided dotted lines so that children have the opportunity to navigate when depicting parts of the face.

    Therefore, we draw one vertical line and 2 horizontal lines on the drawing. Using a vertical line, we delimit the left and right parts of the face, and horizontal marks divide the face into 3 parts: forehead and eyebrows, eyes and nose, mouth and chin.

    • Let's move on to the next stage, where we draw the eyebrows and eyes. Eyebrows are two arches located parallel to each other. They are depicted above the top horizontal line. At the next stage, the eyebrows can be given any shape.

    Under the same line we draw eyes, the shape of which can be chosen arbitrarily. The eyes are depicted as two mirrored arcs, between which there is a round iris and pupil.

    In order for children to have a realistic drawing, it is necessary to draw eyelashes on the lower and upper eyelids. The length of the eyelashes on the upper eyelid should be greater than on the lower eyelid.

    • Draw the nose. This stage needs to be given Special attention, since it is the nose that most children fail to do. In order to give it the correct shape, make it proportional, it is recommended to start drawing the nose from inside eyebrows A thin arc is drawn down, indicating the crown of the nose.

    After this, the wings of the nose and nostrils are drawn, all excess is erased with an eraser, and the lines are drawn with a pencil.

    • At the very bottom of the face we draw a mouth. It will be depicted as a lower arcuate line and two arcuate lines located on top. The upper and lower parts of the mouth are connected and outlined with a pencil. Using a slightly curved horizontal line, draw a line dividing the upper and lower lip.

    • The stage at which the portrait, depicted in stages, will be supplemented with finishing touches, involves the depiction of ears, shoulders and hair. In order for the drawing to be correct and all parts of the face to be proportional, it is necessary to follow the recommendations for their depiction.

    So, the ears should be at the same level as the nose. After finishing the shoulders, you can move on to the hair. If the portrait depicts a man, then the hair will be short; if it is a woman, then you can come up with any haircut, hairstyle, hair length.

    Having drawn the portrait step by step, use an eraser to erase minor errors, straighten the lines with a simple pencil, and also remove all marks that were made on the initial stage drawing. If desired, the portrait can be supplemented with elements such as freckles and birthmarks.

    Given step-by-step instruction easy for children. It allows you to master the basic skills of depicting a person’s face, learn to draw its parts correctly, observing the recommended proportions. The portrait turns out realistic, because it is made according to all the rules.

    It is not difficult to instill in children a love of creativity if you approach this issue correctly. If you share the desire young artists to drawing, to support their endeavors, they will certainly master their favorite pastime, because the support and understanding of their parents in this matter comes first.