Q&A for How to Draw a Portrait

Look at them. My favorite technique that I learned for drawing anything, but especially as a good technique to draw portraits, is blind contour drawing. This is an exercise where you look at your subject and you cannot look at your paper or lift up your pencil while you draw. You are training your eye to talk to your hand. This is a fundamental skill that really helps with drawing portraiture in particular.

Begin with a light pencil outline of basic shapes to get the dimensions of the objects right. You can eyeball it or use a ruler. Then work on sketching concrete shapes, like circles and rectangles, still in pencil. Then continue to add more detail. Shading and small details should be last. Don't be afraid to mess up- proportions are key.

If you have a hard copy, you can trace the portrait on tracing paper with a pencil, use pencil to transfer it onto another sheet of paper, and color it in. If not, try to observe the portrait's style and try to use similar values, colors, and shapes.

They mean a kneadable eraser, it's used for lightening areas slightly. If you're really stuck you can use blu-tack, but it doesn't work as well.

Of course, using a mirror is a great way to study your own face and learn how to draw without just copying from a photo.