Tips on Pencil Portrait Drawing – Drawing Children

The drawing of children demands freshness and directness of purpose. Unfortunately there are not too many quick and ready rules. Let us just say that children’s portraits demand a sharp and patient eye.

For those who intend to do commercial portraiture the good news is that children’s portraits can be lucrative. There are very few artists who can competently render children.

Soft lighting works best for portraits of children. The child could be looking toward a bright light source. This sort of light source will illuminate the child’s face and create an introspective facial expression. The value stretch or range goes from light to medium with the eyes really dark.

Addressing the facial proportions of children in a general sense is somewhat of a waste of time. Their facial proportions change dramatically within a six month time span.

Suffice it to say that the younger the child is the smaller the face in relation to the skull. The eyes also appear larger although this can be deceiving. A child’s nose can be a nightmare to draw – there is nothing really to latch onto. And the mouth is extremely delicate and sensitive not to mention its constant motion if you draw from life.

If you do want to list some general proportions you can say that whereas an adult face is about half the size of the frontal skull side, a child’s face is about one-third of that size. Also, observe how small an infant’s neck is compared to the size of the head.

At its widest section, a baby’s face is about five eye widths wide. The width between the eyes is a little bit more than the width of an eye. Both the mouth and the nose are about the same width of an eye. Again, we must emphasize that these proportions are only a general rule and individual face proportions can be different. The above general rules can be used for

comparison purposes when you do your own careful observations of a particular face.
As always, start your drawing by striking the arabesque and then correcting the height/width proportions as necessary.

After establishing the primary facial proportions (i.e., the brow, nose, mouth, etc.) block-in the major light/dark patterns. Then, stump down the graphite using your fingers or a stump. To render and re-shape the lights use a clean kneaded eraser.

Now the features are carefully placed, sized and partially rendered. There are two things to remember here:

1. Your pencils must be very sharp, and

2. At this stage, you should never fully complete a feature. Render each feature no more than 50%.

Once the features are sized and placed as best you can, you can now further develop them. Do not neglect the hair and sides of the face. Everything should be brought up together. As you continue to draw you should always be on the lookout for errors in proportion and value.

In conclusion, the basic techniques used to draw a child’s portrait are of course always the same. Above, we listed most of the differences in proportion and form between an adult head and that of a child. Your mood when drawing a child should be one that reflects the innocence and the softness of a child.

Remi Engels is a pencil portrait artist and oil painter and expert teacher. Check out his Pencil Portrait Course and his Portrait Print Package Special

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Remi_Engels

 

 

Face Off: How to Draw Amazing Caricatures and Comic Portraits – A Book Review

By Alina Niemi

If you’ve been to a street fair or amusement park lately, you may have seen a caricature artist in action.  People stop to have their comic portraits drawn in a cartoon style, often with very large heads and tiny bodies doing something funny.  If you’d like to learn how to draw these types of drawings, the book, Face Off: How to Draw Amazing Caricatures & Comic Portraits, by Harry Hamernik, can help.

Most books on how to draw caricatures are from famous artists who have done many celebrity portraits in the past.  Artists like Dick Gautier and Lenn Redman are two of the better known ones.  But their styles are a little dated, and you might be looking for something more applicable to modern style.

The book starts by discussing materials and supplies you will need, including pencils, paper, markers and color pencils.  I like the instructions for a do-it-yourself lap easel, which can be made cheaply if you have very basic handy construction skills.

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It then covers marker, pencil, and colored pencil techniques.  These include how to not get fuzzy lines, varying your lines, working with value, and color blending.  Then he shows how to color a portrait using pencils and even some computer coloring techniques.

He presents a specific process for drawing a portrait and encourages you to draw ten faces every day for twenty days in a row before trying to sketch someone.  You need to know how to do the process of a caricature first, without getting stuck, before you can then add the difficulty of trying to make it look like someone.

The next section covers how to draw specific features.  He gives several sample face shapes and examples of noses, eyes, hair, etc.  There are multiple helpful hints and tips scattered throughout, such as this one about eyes:  “A larger iris will make your subject look younger.  Think Bambi.”

He also discusses and explains distance, anchor, and pivot points.  These are key when drawing portraits, because the tiniest change in details can make your caricature look like the person or not.  Drawing a likeness is extremely difficult.

The rest of the book contains two large sections, one for 3/4 view portraits, and one for profile views.  These, like the section on face forward portraits, give lots of examples, tips, and tricks.

There is a great sampling of different facial types and a fair range of ages, although there are no older people at all.  But there are some with glasses, a head bandana, jewelry, and facial hair, the sorts of things that can trip you up.

Overall, this is an excellent overview if you are wanting to learn how to draw in this style.  Face Off: How to Draw Amazing Caricatures and Comic Portraits, by Harry Hamernik will get you started in the right direction.

Learn more about drawing cartoons

Find out more about how to draw caricatures and cartooning at http://cartooningbooks.net/book-review-face-off-how-to-draw-amazing-caricatures-and-comic-portraits/

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Face-Off:-How-to-Draw-Amazing-Caricatures-and-Comic-Portraits---A-Book-Review&id=5621292] Face Off: How to Draw Amazing Caricatures and Comic Portraits – A Book Review

Our Top Ten How To Draw Faces And More Product Recommendations

There are so many products on the market that are aimed at helping you develop your drawing and painting talents. This is great, but they can often be difficult to find and if you do, difficult to choose.

Here, we are listing ten of the top products that are available on the Internet today. They have been placed in the order that we prefer them, but that is not to say you will!!

Have a browse through them and decide for yourself whether you think you can gain anything from them. It is suggested you read the testimonials where you find them as these provide information on how the courses have benefited users.

Good luck!