One of the problems beginners face is beeing able to accurately measure distances, angles and positions of diffferent features of their subjects. Another problem is doing all of this quickly. This tutorial focuses on my approach to drawing the portrait, but the techniques explained here can be used for the figure or anything else you might want to draw.

My approach to drawing

01-02: I start out with the biggest shape – which usually is the face. I don’t draw the skull as most people would suggest – instead I focus directly on the visible face. this is faster and cleaner. I start at the eyebrow and move down to the chin. It’s one stroke. I either get it right or erase and redo. This time I got it right on my first try. This is called contour drawing and it is a skill which can be trained. Being able to accurately draw a contour makes initial drawing of large shapes much faster. The secret is to draw the line very carefully. I move my hand slowly and gently, thinking about the right angles and distances as I go along. Since it’s just one (squiggly) line instead of tens of lines on top of each other my drawing remain very clean. Often when people draw with lines upon lines the mind fills in the blanks so you think it’s fine but you don’t know which lines to erase.

03: Here I start adding facial features. I almost always start with the outermost brow and draw either the nose first or the brow first and then the eye. Now here is the trick for getting stuff aligned properly: I look at my reference photo and draw imaginary horizontal and/or vertical lines (in the image these lines are drawn in white) from the point I want to reference. It’s easy for most people to determine what is aligned horizontally or vertically. There is usually something to help you with that. The edges of the paper, the horizon, etc. I note that the eyebrow ends at a point directly above a point slightly off the center of his chin. I also measure it’s relative hight to the jaw-line I drew.

Now, what is important to consider here, is that stuff usually does not align perfectly. Newbies often make the mistake that they try to make it “fit” with their knowledge of the face. When you look at those front view graphs they often make a point of the fact that the mouth is as wide as the distance between the pupils of the eyes. But that knowledge won’t help you when drawing a 3/4 view. So what you are looking for are “good guesses”. In this case – the marker at the chin for instance – “it’s slightly off center” – how much is “slightly” on your drawing anyway? This is where you make your guess. Usually there is enough information to get you in the ballpark so you know that the measured feature is correctly aligned. And that is what is important.

04-05: Another couple of examples. I make sure I got the nose at the right height by drawing an imaginary line vertically of the bottom of the nose on the reference to see if it alignes at the same point in my drawing. I’m lucky to find that the side of the nose alignes perfectly with the other eyebrow.

06: This illustrates that the technique can be used to find errors in your drawing. I didn’t make the mouth wide enough on the left side – which is easy to see once you draw those imaginary lines.

07: And yet another mistake – Once most features are placed it’s easier to spot other mistakes. This is what you usually don’t see in tutorials aimed at beginners, which is wierd as it is just as important for beginners to know that mistakes do happen and how to deal with them as it is to know the anatomy of the human figure.

08: After only 5 minutes it is already beginning to resemble Keanu Reeves. From this point on it is just a matter of refinement.

Some general observations

1. Many beginners often choose a full frontal view of the face/body as their first subject, thinking it will be good practice for getting the proportions right. Also, all the figure drawing tutorials always have these nice charts showing how many eyes-wide or heads-tall stuff is or how things align. Besides, a front view is much easier than say a 3/4 view of the face right? So it’s perfect for a beginner. Wrong! The problem with a full front view is that besides proportion – you are also dealing with symmetry. Which actually makes it harder to deal with than the 3/4 view or profile view. Also, proportions are not always as they appear in text-books as every face is different (and tilted and lit differently as-well). So instead of drawing the shapes and contours you see you immediately lock in on the “objects” drawing an eye, a nose etc.
    
2. It is always best to find the biggest shapes and get those right first and move in. For a portrait this means that you should start with the general shape of the face/skull and draw the eyes, nose etc later.
    
3. You don’t have to make that eye look perfect right away – a couple lines suggesting it’s general size and position is all you need initially – once most stuff is in place, you can start refining.
    
4. For the beginner it is wise to choose a good subject. It is generally easier to get a good likeness when drawing men with relatively strong jaw-lines than it is to draw cute girls with smooth skin and generally clean features. There is simply a much greater margin of error when the face is rough to begin with.
    

A 15 minute portrait of Keanu Reeves.