Pencil Portrait Drawing Tips on Supplies
What do you need to draw pencil portraits? The bare minimum is a pencil and a piece of paper. Needing hardly any equipment is an advantage but also a disadvantage. Drawing is to the arts what boxing is to sports. The fewer tools you have the more skilled you need to be to stand out. Therefore, as a pencil artist, it is particularly important that you use the right tools of the right quality.
Below, I present just about every piece of drawing equipment you will ever need. Study the list and then pick and choose depending on your style and ambitions:
* Pencils. Drawing pencils, in general, come in degrees of softness and hardness:
9H, 8H, ..., 2H, H, F, HB, B, 2B, 3B, ..., 8B, 9B
where 9H is the hardest and 9B is the softest. The F pencil is the odd duck in the line. It yields fairly fine and soft lines and is often used to draw hair. The HB pencil separates the hard H pencils from the softer B pencils.
To start, you may want to try the 2H (hard), HB, 2B, 4B, and 6B (soft) pencils. Later, with some experience, you can always reevaluate your choice.
* Paper. Try out a number of differently textured papers. For portraits, I prefer a 2-ply Bristol, acid-free, heavyweight, smooth surface. But your choice should be dictated by your own style or just by whether or not you enjoy a particular paper surface.
* Drawing Board. A 1/4 inch tempered Masonite or Plexiglas board of at least 16 x 20 inches will do.
* Clips or Masking Tape
. You use these to fix the paper on your drawing board and come in handy in all sorts of other situations. I use a lot of them.
* Maulstick. This stick is used to steady your hand and to avoid smudging of your work.
* Broom. A desk broom is used to occasionally brush debris off your work. This also avoids smudges and save time because you have to erase less.
* Sheet of Bond Paper. You put this sheet under your drawing hand, again to avoid smudging your drawing while you are working.
* Pencil Sharpener. You will need a sturdy small one for the road and an industrial strength electric one for your studio.
* Workable Fixative. This is a spray used to fix the finished portrait. This protects the drawing and makes it safe for future smudging.
* Erasers. You need two types: 1. A vinyl one and; 2. a kneaded one. A vinyl eraser is the usual hard rectangular kind. A kneaded eraser is the gray kind that acts like putty.
* Ruler. A regular 12 inch metal ruler will do. Make sure you can easily read the divisions on the ruler.
* Blending Tortillons. These are spiral-wound cones of paper used to blend a darker region into a lighter one.
* Paper Tissue. You use tissue paper as another blending tool.
That's about it. As you practice (yes, practice), you should try out some of the above tools and see if they fit with your mode of drawing. Be flexible but try to work towards a final style of pencil portrait drawing that feels comfortable to you and involves a subset of the above mentioned tools used in a practiced and almost unconscious manner.
Remi Engels, Ph.D., is a pencil portrait artist and oil painter. He is also the author of a popular Pencil Portrait Drawing Course. Get Your Free copy here: Remi's Pencil Portrait Drawing Course while supplies last.
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Top 20 Drawing Tips for Beginners
1 - If at all possible, always draw from life and not photographs.
2 - When drawing, less is sometimes better. Do not attempt to draw every line and detail that you see or you will give your viewer too much information to absorb.
3 - Do not try and get all of the information in your drawing completed at one sitting. Drawing is a process. Layout the general idea of your drawing and then slowly add in your details.
4 - Do not be overly judgmental about your drawing before it is completed. This may cause you to become discouraged and give up.
5 - Do not take on subjects that are too complicated at first. This will certainly cause you to become discouraged if the drawing isn't as good as you expected it to be. Start with simple subjects that you know you can complete and then progress to more complicated ones.
6 - Forget everything you already know about a particular subject before you start drawing it. Draw what you see in front of you and not what you know already about that subject.
7 - Make sure you have excellent lighting. Nothing is more frustrating to an artist than poor lighting. If you can't see you can't draw. If you do not have a well lit room with natural sunlight to work in, then check your local art supply store or search online for full spectrum lighting products that mimic natural sunlight.
8 - Get yourself a pad of newsprint paper. Its very cheap and great for practice and doing preliminary sketches.
9 - Keep your pencils sharp. There are drawing techniques that require a blunt pencil point , but for the most part, you should keep your pencil points sharpened.
10 - Vary the weight of your lines. Use a variety of different lines in your drawing by pressing harder or by lifting your pencil. This may seem like an obvious thing, but when an artist becomes deeply focused in a drawing, they can sometimes forget to use this simple technique.
11- Keep a sketchbook with you wherever you go. Whenever you have a free moment, practice your drawing. It doesn't matter if the subject is a light post, an insect or a garbage pail. The more often you draw, the more observant you will become.
12 - Do not over use smudging and blending techniques to achieve values in your drawings.
13 - Never throw out any of your drawings. Keep a neat portfolio of everything you draw. This is an excellent way to see your progress over time.
14 - Avoid looking at your drawing too often. Make sure you are constantly focusing on the subject and only glancing at your drawing. By doing so, you won't constantly judge your drawing, or think something is wrong or out of place. Focus on the subject and draw what you see.
15 - How to hold your drawing instrument - Hold your pencil in a way that is most comfortable for you. Some hold the pencil just as you would hold a pen or pencil if you were writing. Others hold a pencil with the pencil between the thumb and index finger, with the rest of the pencil resting under the palm of your hand. Whichever method you use for holding your pencil, make certain that you do not hold the pencil too tightly.
16 - Practice the contour drawing technique - This very basic technique is simply drawing the outline of your subject without any shading to indicate form.
17 - Practice the hatching technique - This drawing technique uses a series of parallel lines drawn close together, in the same direction, which gives the appearance of value.
18 - Practice tonal or value drawing - In this approach to drawing we are indicating the various changes of light and shade in our picture without the use of strong edges and lines.
19 - Practice the blind contour drawing technique - Similar to contour drawing, only you do not look at the paper. The point of this exercise is to force you to better observe what it is you are drawing. You should have no concern over the outcome of your drawing so it is important not to peek.
20 - Practice the upside down drawing technique - Drawing upside down is a wonderful exercise to awaken the right side of your brain. When you turn an image upside down, you are making it somewhat abstract and unrecognizable. This forces you to draw what you see as opposed to relying on your memory to draw something.
Ralph Serpe is an artist and webmaster of two fantastic websites for beginner artists. Follow the links that follow for more information: Follow this link now to learn how to improve your drawing with free lessons and tips at CreativeSpotlite.Com... Follow this link now to learn how to draw online at the Creative Spotlite Art Instruction Blog....
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