The eye of the beholder

This entry is about a picture I drew a few months back of a girl I know in real life. Unlike the others, I actually approached her to request a photo that I could copy. Hers is a great face for a portrait, with classic big blue eyes and high cheekbones, and when she smiles her cheeks become slightly babyish, plus she has perfectly straight teeth. The icing on the proverbial cake is the nose. At the top this nose starts like it might be equine, but then tapers into a baby nose at the end. It really is a unique nose! So whilst I was delighted with the smile in the photo below, I must admit to being a bit disappointed that the face-on view does not show off the nose to full effect. (The only other downside was that the face was not in focus, though regular readers will know that with a bit of pencil trickery it is possible to sharpen it up somewhat!)

I started off as always by drawing the outline of the shape of the face, followed by the eyes, nose, mouth then hair. I used an almost perfectly smooth piece of paper, and a 2B pencil for the entire protrait to see what effect this would have. I usually alternate between H, B and 2B, but 2B sticks to the paper better than any of the others. On the parts of the face that did not require detail (mainly the cheeks and chin) I 'cheated' and used a finger to smudge the graphite into the right places to create the shadows. 2B works especially well for this trick. This photo was taken using a flash, so the shadows are few and far between, mainly on the extreme edges of the face and under the hair line.

Long hair is always fun to draw, and a tip I would offer is to make it far more shiny than it actually is. To me, hair looks far more effective when it has a highlighted area, as I did with the fringe in this case. The white of the paper 'shining' through gives the illusion of extra brightness and contrast.

The nose was actually quite easy, and the subject herself actually complimented me on getting the nose 'perfect'! The mouth however was much harder. In the photo the combination of the flash and the blur makes it difficult to see exactly where the lips are, so I made my best guess. I drew the mouth once, then rubbed it out completely and drew it again. It is still not perfect but it is better:

As always visit http://pencil-pictures.co.uk for the latest drawings. Feel free to leave comments!