The rise of a portrait painter : Gerry Bryceland? While drawing from life with a self-portrait involves using a mirror, and it is challenging, it’s also a challenge that is definitely worth taking. Many artists will tell you that there’s nothing quite like drawing from life, so even though drawing while looking in a mirror might be difficult, it’s quite rewarding. One thing you can do to make the process a bit easier on yourself is to take a backup photo. Once you have your pose in the mirror down, take out your phone and take a quick picture. You can use this as a guide to ensure that your light source doesn’t change and to help you capture little details that may not show up in the mirror. Sometimes less is more. But that’s not always the case when you are drawing a self-portrait. You could draw a minimalist self-portrait, and it could turn out amazing. But if you want to do a highly detailed self-portrait, you are going to have to spend some more time and effort on the process.
Drawing realistic portraits can definitely be a challenge, but this holds true at the beginning for any new technique that budding artists wish to learn. The key to conquering portrait drawing is by mastering each facial feature, in this case the sum of all the right parts will make an accurate whole. It is very important to train your eye to observe the essential details that give each face its own individual identity – the drooping of the eyes, the slant of the lips, the slightly arched eyebrow, and many other particularities that can help you achieve a realistic portrait. Not to worry, though the human body may seem too complicated at first, it can be simplified and broken down into easier and more manageable parts! Let’s give thanks to the generally symmetrical bodies that nature has gifted us with that allowed us to create basic rules of proportions to serve as our useful starting point. Now, let’s start with the step-by-step of portrait drawing by first gathering the materials you’ll be using for this tutorial.
Gerard Bryceland‘s recommendations about portret painting: The light tones are applied in a glaze of titanium white to enhance the existing form and to add some texture by suggesting traces of perspiration or oily skin. Note also how the form of the lips is completed with skin tones before any color is added to redden them. A variety of small brushstrokes, stippling and smudging is also used for the light tones. Refining the tone, color and texture is the final stage of painting the skin. Warmer scarlet and naphthol crimson are carefully stippled as thin glazes to suggest the blush of the cheeks, lips and subtle variations in the complexion. The dark and light tones applied in the first two stages are finally heightened for dramatic effect by increasing their contrast and smoothing out any irregularities in their paint surface.
Try to start your self-portrait with light, quick sketching lines. This will not only breathe life and create a sense of movement in your drawing, but it will also allow you to lay out a solid foundation before you start to render your drawing in with more details. If you decide that you want to draw a black and white self-portrait, you have your choice of many different materials you could use. Two of the most popular options are graphite and charcoal. Both have their advantages and can be used in similar ways, but they are definitely distinctive materials that will give you a different look for your finished drawing.
About Gerard Bryceland: I’m Gerard Bryceland an artist based in Maidstone Kent and regularly get commissioned to do work doing paintings and portraits of people and their families. I’ve always been an artist from my childhood, I loved drawing my friends and family initially just to mess around with my friends and had a lot of fun drawing them. But as i got older it really just became a business as my friends and their families would want me to do family portraits and that type of thing. With word of mouth word gets out and before you know it you know it I’m 35 and still doing the same thing.