A Step by Step Guide to Building a Portrait

As a portrait artist, I am constantly asked how I draw like I do. To be honest it's pretty simple when you go back to the basics. I have photographed my latest drawing in stages, breaking the portrait into the simple steps that I work by. The portrait is of motorcyclist and TV personality Guy Martin. He is extremely popular on my island from racing in the TT races. He is also easily recognisable to many with his wild hair and signature sideburns. The piece is drawn using only a 2B pencil, my favourite medium to use when sketching.

Step 1-Before you start drawing, make sure you have these five key items, a rubber, a pencil sharpener, a pencil of your choice, a surface of your choice-I am drawing in a standard artist sketchbook and a high quality image to draw from-the better the quality, the more detail you can observe for your piece. Firstly I pick a starting point, for this drawing I chose the top of the jacket. I draw only shapes at this stage. I look to the dark and light patches on the jacket and draw on the shaded patches, this will help me later when I begin to shade my drawing. Proportions are very important, if the jacket takes up a third of the image you are drawing from then make sure the jacket takes up a third of your drawing.

Step 2-I start on the structure of the face. I constantly refer to my image to make sure the proportions are correct, once you lose your proportions you lose the likeness in the face. Again I am only drawing shapes at this point. Breaking down a drawing into shapes really helps me, but everyone is different.

Step 3-I start on the facial features. I always start with the nose in portraits because it sits central to the face, once you have the nose you can judge the distances to place the lips and eyes. Again sticking to just drawing shapes.

Step 4-My favourite part, the shading!! I always start shading by picking the darkest parts of the photograph. Once I have got the dark patches of the faces shaded by using lots of pressure with my pencil, I then move onto the lighter parts, graduating the pressure I apply with my pencil. Smudging often occurs but you can go over the darkest patches later on creating depth to your piece.

Step 5-The hair! Again, I start by observing the image I am drawing from and picking out only the dark patches. I draw shapes on the hair and colour them in with the pencil applying lots of pressure. Once I have all the dark patches filled, I lighten the pressure of my pencil when filling in the lighter patches of hair.

Step 6-The final stretch. The jacket works exactly the same, firstly picking only the shaded areas and colouring them in with the pencil as dark as I can. I then graduate my pencil pressure once again for the lighter areas, blending as I go. 

And there you go! This is how I draw. Granted its not as easy as I made out at the start of my post but it just takes practice :-) I've been drawing since I was tiny, which is why last year I started training to be an art teacher. I wanted to pass on everything I have learnt to the younger generation. I hope after reading this post everyone picks up a pencil and gives it a go :-)