Portrait Progressions

In the fall of 8th grade, almost three years ago now, my art teacher introduced me to the grid method. This is where you create a grid on the photograph you want to draw as well as on the paper you're drawing on. You then draw what you see in the photograph in each square. This helps to break it up into sections and keep the drawing more accurate.

For this specific assignment, the teacher gave us a simplified portrait to draw. This is how mine turned out.

I liked this grid method and wanted to see how it would work with an actual photograph that was more complex. So I looked through a magazine and found a clear, black & white photograph, cut it out, and used the grid method to draw and shade it.

January 2018

I was really pleased with how it turned out and wanted to continue trying more portraits like this. So I used pictures of family and friends and practiced more and more.

January 2018

March 2018

September 2018

Then in the fall of 2018, I decided to try using charcoal pencils in the portraits. The darkest graphite pencil I had was a 2B, so using the charcoal really helped me be able to get the darkest parts of the drawing as dark as they should be. This made a huge difference in my drawings as there was more contrast and a fuller range of value.

November 2018

August 2019

November 2019

I wanted to try doing colored portraits as well, so I tried out chalk pastels. They blend really well, especially for the skin tones, and have really vibrant colors. So using photos and the grid method to draw them out before coloring them in, I created these.

September 2018

April 2020

April 2020

I realized it would be good if I practiced drawing portraits from life as well, instead of just from photographs. I had done this back in 2015 when I was 11 or so, but hadn't tried it again for a few years.

November 2015

Then this January, I had an assignment for my art class to draw a self-portrait from life, using a mirror. I could definitely tell that it wasn't quite as accurate as my grid drawings, but I was still happy with it.

January 2020

After my class ended in May, I retried the self-portrait to see any improvement, and it was much better. I spent more time on it and used much better lighting so that I could see what I was drawing easier. It turned out much more accurate-even without using a grid-and more realistic.

May 2020

While I'll definitely continue using the grid method for some portraits, I also want to practice more with drawing people from life. The grid method has really helped me improve though, even in drawing from life. It has helped me learn to observe closely and pay attention to the details, as well as being able to estimate lengths and angles better. It's also given me an opportunity to just take the time to study different faces and learn some general rules about how to draw portraits realistically. Starting out with black & white photos and learning how to create a full value range has also been a good preparation for drawing from life where we have to see in color but then turn it into black & white on the paper. I hope to continue growing in observational skills, the use of value, and the use of color in my portraits.