Recently, when I was asked to draw a portrait as a surprise gift, I felt very excited even if a little anxious. Portraits, once my favourite subject had taken second place to landscapes for me ever since attending Aberystwyth’s School of Art where there was the most inspiring scenery. Leading up to the commission, researching portrait drawing techniques and drawing portraits from magazine articles became a regular occurence.
Before I begin a portrait, I like to have a number of reference photos to work from. This is because I find people look quite different from one photo to the next, so seeing a few photos helps me to get a much better picture of the individual in order to create a likeness with my drawing.
Once I had chosen a photo to depict, I set about printing an enlarged copy of it to see the face in more detail. Turning this print upside down helped my brain to concentrate purely on what was there. I used a hb pencil to carefully measure the portrait in order to draft out the initial marks on paper. Then I used soft hatch marks to describe the features; varying the pencil type from hard hb to soft 3b so that the drawing would appear to gradually emerge from the paper. The hatching technique seems to give depth without being to heavy and I feel these little marks help to bring the drawing to life.
The most challenging part of portraits for me is to get the likeness right; the expression and features all play a part in this and it does seem that every pencil mark, no matter how small makes a huge difference to the finished portrait. Measuring continuously when producing a portrait helps me to get a correct likeness.