Tips on Pencil Portrait Drawing - Hair

Drawing hair is not all that difficult but it does take quite a bit of time to make the result to look real and natural. In fact, it usually takes two to three times longer to do the hair than it does to do the rest of the portrait. So, do not get frustrated and know that you will have to spend the time.

Here are some pointers to help you succeed at drawing the best hair possible:

* Line Drawing As always, the first step is to produce a line drawing that shows the overall shape of the hair and maps out some of the main value areas. At this stage, you should look at the hair as a shape and ignore all details such as strands. Do observe however how the hair flows, i.e., take note of the growth directions of the hair.

* Values Next, using the map you created on your line drawing, start laying in the major values, i.e., the major darks and lights. Make sure you always follow the growth direction of the hair. This is very important. Follow the flow.

* Blending At this stage, you can blend the darks out towards the lights. Then, reapply the darks and pull them into the light areas using a tortillon or a pencil (if there is not enough graphite on the paper). Work from the dark areas into the light areas. After that, use a pointed kneaded eraser as a drawing tool to pull the lights into the darks.

This process should be repeated several times until you reach the desired look of fullness.

* Curls If your subject has curls, you should treat each curl as a separate object with its own darks, lights, and highlights. At the same time, make sure that each curl fits into the overall layout of the hair. This means, for example, that a particular curl should flawlessly connect to its neighbors.

* Shadows Often the hair cast a few shadows onto the forehead. These cast shadows should always be rendered in the correct value. You will be surprised how much they contribute to the realistic appearance of the hair and the subject in general. They very much help to show the fullness and three-dimensionality of the hair.

* Forehead The forehead, like anything else, has a certain value. When the hair falls over the forehead, it is important to apply the same forehead value to the areas of the forehead that are visibly located under the hair. If you leave these areas white, you will loose a lot of realism.

* Gray Hair The illusion of gray or white hair is created through using pencil strokes sparingly and through more blending with a tortillon or a paper tissue. A soft and silky look can be created by using the kneaded eraser to lift out the appropriate.

Much more can be said about the drawing of hair. This includes such subjects as hairstyles, men's versus women's hair, thin hair, hair color, etc. However, the above remarks will suffice to set you on the right path. Later, you can always consult an advanced work on hair drawing.

Author Info:

Remi Engels, Ph.D., is a pencil portrait artist and oil painter. Samples of Remi's pencil portraits and other articles can be found at Remi's Pencil Portraits.

Tips on Pencil Portrait Drawing - Preparing the Photograph

Once you have acquired an acceptably clear subject photograph from your customer, the question remains what do you do with it? Well, you prepare that photograph to be used as a reference for your pencil portrait drawing effort. The preparation procedure I will describe works well for me and I have been using it for years. Of course, as you get better at pencil portrait drawing you may want to adapt the procedure to better suit your own working habits. So, here we go:

* First, I scan the photograph into my computer at a fairly high resolution. You can always reduce the resolution if you feel that this will better suit your purpose.

* Then, I bring the scanned image into a graphics computer program such as Photoshop and adjust the brightness and the contrast so it brings out the best in the subject. This is also the time to transform your color photograph (if that is what the customer gave you) into a black and white (grayscale) image.

* Next, I adjust the size of the image. For that, I focus on the size of the head, i.e., the vertical distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin. The best distance to work with is between 9.5 and 10.5 inches which is about life-size.

* Keeping the size of the head fixed, I now crop or expand the image to a size corresponding to my drawing paper. For example, if I am going to draw on a 14 by 17 sheet of paper, my image will be about 10 by 13 inches. This leaves about 2 inches of empty space all around the edges of my drawing paper.

At this stage I also pay attention to the composition, i.e., the layout of the final image, the relationship between the subject and its environment, and how much of the subject, other than the head, I will represent. Make sure you do not change the already established size of the head when you manipulate the overall size of the image.

* Next, if you wish, you can draw a grid onto the image. I often use a grid consisting of 1 by 1 inch squares. So for a 10 by 13 inch image you will have 130 squares to work with. Photoshop has the option to easily draw such grid lines over an existing image.

Don't worry, using a grid is an age old tradition and does not constitute "cheating". Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Edgar Degas, to name only a few, all made use of grids. However, you should also keep on practicing without grids and draw directly from the real world where the sizes and proportions usually differ from the corresponding ones on your drawing paper. Later, when you get much better, you may want to increase the size of the squares and eventually dispense with them altogether. But, for now, you can rely on grids. They are, after all, just the ideal tool to use when drawing from photographs.

* Finally, it is time to print out the manipulated image in black and white (grayscale). You are now ready to start drawing your pencil portrait. Note, that after you scanned in the original photograph you do not need it anymore. Put it away carefully so you can give it back to your customer in its pristine condition. Do not loose or misplace the original photograph. Above all, do not burn it!

With this, you are now ready to create your first pencil portrait masterpiece.

Author Info:

Remi Engels, Ph.D., is a pencil portrait artist and oil painter. Samples of Remi's pencil portraits and other articles can be found at Remi's Pencil Portraits.

Things Required to Make Oil Painting Easier

The process of painting with varnishes is popularly known as oil painting. Varnishes are a combination of oil like the linseed oil with the resin such as pine resin. Other than linseed oil, oils like poppy seed oil, walnut oil and safflower oil. Oil paintings provide extremely versatile color combinations. For a thick coat oil paints can be used in impasto, which is a textured application where the marks of the paint brush remain visible. They can even be used for a thin layered image like glazes.

Here are some oil painting tips which will make your painting experience more enjoyable and disciplined.

• First the selection of a non porous palette is of vital importance; it would be extremely useful if he would place it in the same order as you paint so that it could be dipped instinctively thus constituting a good flow of painting. Always pour a good amount of whites. Arranging the colors at the end of the palette is considered as good practice thus providing space in the center for mixing.

• It is always suggested to invest in a good set of brushes because cheap set of brushes often tend to lay their bristles. Sometimes it extremely becomes difficult to clean the brush, then it would be suggested that you mix some thinner along with some liquid soap, the brushed can be dipped and then it could be wiped with a newspaper.

• At times it becomes a major chaos to find the right combination of colors to get a lighter combination or a darker shade. The commonly used colors come from the spectrum viz; red, blue, violet, orange, yellow, green. The chaos would be easily solved once we become aware of the properties of colors value, intensity, temperature and hue. Intensity or purity of a color indicates how bright or dull the color is For example when orange is directly used from the tube it has higher intensity. On the other hand value of the color refers to the darkness and the lightness of the color. Colors vary in temperature from warm yellows to cool violets. Hue is the synonym of color like apple and cherry are shades or hues of red. Ivory black can be avoided to be used for underpainting or outlining as it dries much slower than the rest of the oil paints.

• To avoid cracks in the painting always follow the fat over lean i.e.; the proportion of oil should be increased for each additional layer because the lower layers penetrate the oil of the layers above, thus causing cracks.

• It is much preferable that the oil paintings should never be dried in the dark this will constitute to the formation of a thin film of oil raised above thus yellowing the paints.

Author Info:

Ben Jonson is a Copywriter of http://www.paintingmax.com

He had written many articles in various topics. For more information visit: Barbizon School

Contact him at paintingmax.ben@googlemail.com