by Izzet Inak

Created on: January 14, 2009

When your friend introduces you to another person, you first shake his hand and then look at his face. You can understand by looking at his eyes if that person is glad or not glad to meet you. Our faces reflect the thoughts of us better than any part of our body.

Here I will introduce you to our new friend, the portrait that we are going to draw. It is very important for you. You will live with it for a while and you will understand all the feelings it got.

A caricaturist looks at a face and catches few distinct characteristics of that face. The details of the face and the body are not very important for him. He does his best to reflect the thoughts of that person with the face he is going to draw. We are going to draw a portrait not a caricature so what we need to reflect are the feelings of that person with the details of his face.

The portrait might represent the person that you are drawing but if you cannot catch the feelings of that person, it can never be a perfect portrait. Start drawing the portrait with all your feelings; it will be a lot easier. There are ways and rules to draw a portrait but the person that we are going to draw his face have characteristics too. First try to determine the shape of his head. Is it oval or square, is it big or small? Let's say it is oval. Draw an oval and then draw a perpendicular line in the middle of the oval from the top to the bottom of the oval. The next step is the nose. Its length is usually the same as the length of the ears. The distance between the eyes should be the length of an eye. Now we can draw more perpendicular lines and try to see what kind of details pass through these lines. We need to make a lot of drawings to catch the perfect ratio.

Be very careful with the lighting and the shadows. Instead of drawing the facial lines with clear lines, draw them with lights and shadows. When you are painting, to add realism to the portrait, draw it from the background to the foreground. The first part that you are going to paint should be the background, then the face and then the nose and lips. If you start drawing from the nose or the lips, the parts of the face will look like you stick them there with glue. Draw the details but not all of them. The details are hidden in his eyes, his smile and his mental situation. Live with the portrait that you are drawing so they can be like your real life friends when you hang it on the wall.

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