Drawing Side Portraits
"Throwing Shade"
Welcome back everyone!
I hope we all had a wonderful winter break :)
Side portraits are different than regular portraits because you cannot do the regular oval and easy guide lines. Many facial features come out when looking to the side and its important to capture it all. This includes shadings such as the cheek bone, jaw line, nose, and probably some more.
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| This is the reference Picture |
When shading, its good to remember some things:
- Shade in a tight spiral motion
- This will allow all the different shades to blend together and make one, nice, smooth finish.
- Start shading light then get darker as you go
- Its difficult to start over when you shaded too dark. Plus, there will be less room for "happy accidents" if you shade lightly then go darker.
- please use a pencil
- pens don't work for beginners
Personally, side portraits aren't my favorite type of portraits. You got to rely on the picture more often and there isn't a lot of guidelines to help with. Practice makes perfect so lets get started!
1. Make a crescent and draw two lines. One will be the jawline and the other will be the eye line. This is all the guidance we're going to have today.
2. Start drawing in the nose, chin, mouth, and forehead. Look at the picture for reference and draw very lightly. If you draw to darkly, it will leave a mark when you erase it and your mistake will be there for everyone to see.
3. My bad, I forgot to take pictures for all the steps :/ Draw in the eyes and nostrils. Add shading areas around the face. Give light, definite lines for where shading occurs. Look at the light and dark areas of the face. Beatty Edwards, author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, says "Curiously, though we use light/shadow to interpret and recognize objects, we pay almost no attention to the specific shapes of the lights and the shadows" (Edwards 180). Shapes define a face and can be manipulated to created a realistic 3D face.a This is my favorite part because it looks so futuristic and super cool. Next draw in the hair. It's important to see all the little details in the hair. It isn't one big block, it has lines and shapes in it. Draw in the neck and give it some shade
4. Shading! This is a fun part because now the drawing comes to life. The shading areas do not mean its one dark block but instead, tells you the boundaries of how dark a place can be (forgive me, I'm not good at words). Remember to use picture reference. 
5. Shading the hair is time consuming and i don't like it so i get sloppy. Many artist say that you should draw every individual hair but that makes me ultra depressed. I use shading to get by and it kind of works. Some good advice by Edwards is to "look for the major directional movements, the exact turn of a strand or wave" (Edwards 162) Again, look at the picture to see all the dark and lights of the hair. Look for patterns so you don't have to stare at the picture for hours.
6. Congratulations! You got through it! I am 100% sure that your drawing looks spectacular.
Can I just say sorry for the brownish looking pictures? My bedroom lighting isn't good at 1:13 AM I don't know why.
I also enjoy listening to music when drawing and I'd like to recommend some nice bops that I listen to :)
Doomsday by MF Doom
I. The Worst Guys [feat. Chance the Rapper] by Childish Gambino
Super Rich Kids by Frank Ocean
These are just a few that I like :))
Thank you for reading my blog. Please give me your thoughts and questions in the comment section down below.
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Thank you and have a great day!