Guidelines For Pencil Portrait Sketching – Drawing Children
The rendering of children demands freshness and directness of purpose. Unfortunately, there are not too many quick and ready rules. Let us just say that kids’ portraits demand a sharp and patient eye.
For those who intend to do professional portraiture the good news is that kids’ portraits can be profitable. There are very few draftspersons who can competently render children.
Soft lighting works best for portraits of children. The kid could be looking toward a bright light source. This sort of light source will illuminate the kid’s face and produce an introspective facial expression. The tone stretch goes from light to medium with the eyes very dark.
Addressing the facial sizes of children in a general sense is somewhat of a waste of time. Their facial sizes change dramatically within a six month time span.
Suffice it to say that the younger the kid is the smaller the face in relation to the head. The eyes also appear larger although this can be misleading. A kid’s nose can be very difficult to render – there is nothing really to hold onto. And the mouth is very fine and sensitive not to mention its constant motion if you render from a model.
If you do want to list some broad sizes you can say that whereas an adult face is about half the size of the frontal head side, a kid’s face is about 1/3 of that size. Also, observe how small an infant’s neck is compared to the size of the head.
At its widest section, a baby’s face is about 5 eye widths wide. The width between the eyes is a tiny bit more than the width of an eye. Both the mouth and the nose are about the same width of an eye. Once more, we must stress that these sizes are only a broad rule and individual face sizes can be different. The above broad rules can be made use of for comparison purposes when you do your own careful observations of a particular face.
As always, start your drawing by striking the arabesque and then correcting the height/width proportions as necessary.
After establishing the primary facial proportions (i.e., the brow, nose, mouth, etc.) block-in the major light/dark patterns. Then, stump down the graphite using your fingers or a stump. To render and re-shape the lights utilize a clean kneaded eraser.
Now the features are carefully placed, measured and partially rendered. There are two things to remember here:
1. Your pencils must be very sharp, and
2. At this time, you should never fully finish a feature. Sketch each feature no more than 50%.
Once the features are sized and situated as best you can, you can now further expand them. Do not neglect the hair and sides of the face. Everything should be brought up together. As you proceed to render you should always be on the lookout for errors in sizes and tone.
In conclusion, the basic methods made use of to render a kid’s portrait are of course always the same. Above, we listed most of the differences in size and shape between an adult head and that of a kid. Your mood when rendering a kid should be one that reflects the innocence and the softness of a kid.
Do you want to learn the secrets of pencil portrait sketching? Download my brand new free pencil portrait drawing tutorial here: pencil portrait course.
Remi Engels is a pencil portrait artist and oil painter and expert sketching teacher. See his work at pencil portraits.
For the art of tattoos and how to tattoo information, please visit this blog.
Post a comment