When I start a portrait I spend a lot of time identifying a photograph that will make the best portrait, studying it and understanding the balance between the light and dark contrasts (which will help create the 3D shape) and positive and negative shapes and planes. Ideally it is better to work from a few stock photos taken at the same time of area detail and not just one photo, but this is not always possible. This blog explains how to go about selecting a good photograph to turn into a portrait.

Some people have expressed an interest in my process. I thought I would take you through how I go about creating realistic hair. This can be very challenging, and some hair is definitely more challenging than others, but there is a basic process that remains the same for me no matter what the texture of the hair.  Everyone’s method and process is different, but this is how I go about ‘constructing’ my portraits.

Step 1: I draw the whole portrait and map out the areas of dark to light as I see them. Sometimes when these contrasts are not clear to me I will use a post editing process to enhance the contrast, or look at the photograph in black and white, which will eliminate all the ‘colour noise’ and allow me to see those vital areas of light and dark and the grey shades in between.

Step 2: Begin building the basic shape that will make up the hair. For this I use a 2b and 4B pencil. If I go too dark at this stage it becomes very difficult to find the correct light and dark balance and i struggle to erase areas for highlights that will create the rounded shape of the head. At this stage some of the dark will look too dark, but it still needs to be developed and balanced. The drawing always looks very ‘cartoonish’ to me in the beginning stages.

Step 3: The changes are subtle and may not be entirely noticeable but they are there.  I have now built the left side.  I still need lighter highlighted areas and some areas still need to be darkened. I use an eraser to rub in or erase in the very light strands of hair.

Step 4: I have used a pencil rubber to erase ‘patches’ and lines of light. At this stage these erased areas are still too thick and solid and need to be softened.

Step 5: Now i go back and work over the eased areas so that i can feather the area lightly with a clutch pencil (sometimes a B but mostly a 2B). This eliminated those solid patches of light which you will never see in hair. There will always be some kind of texture. Whether it is fine or thick, straight or curly, will depend on the subjects hair.

Step 6: Then I go all the way back to step 2 and start the same process with the right side constantly looking at the left side and judging the balance of light and dark. This is so that I don’t have two divided sides with a nose in the middle. In this case the light is a very overall one as I was working with a studio photo so fine detail is not always easy to see.  The professional photographer has ‘softened’ the look making it a bit fuzzy in areas, thus hiding some of the detail. If the light comes in from the side one side will be a lot darker than the other, but then you need to balance this when you begin drawing the face and the drawing will make sense in the end. At this stage it is important not to take the drawing out of context, as once you have finished the portrait it will look very different. You can always go back and darken an area. but it is not always easy to lighten an area.

Step 7: Once I have completed step 2 I then erase the pencil to create the highlighted areas and some of the fine hairs that catch the light. To clear the rubbings off the paper I use a clean paint brush I keep just for this purpose. You can buy special drawing eraser brushes, but this works just as well, as long as you keep it for this purpose only. I use a rubber shaped much like a pencil, which I can sharpen with a sharpener when it becomes blunt. For the fine hair highlights I use a craft knife to slice the eraser point in order to create a more controlled directional erased line.

Step 8: At this stage I asses the areas of light and dark and make sure the balance is right. you can see how the highlighted areas on the hair help create the rounded shape of her head. I wasn’t happy with one area that made two much of a division and I went back and just darkened the area moving from left to right so I removed the hard line. None of the ears are visible but on the left side there is just a hint of a shadow where the ear lobe is and this needed a little softening as I had made the area too solid.

Now I will continue with the face and shoulders building the area up from light to dark constantly checking it with the hair and darkening areas of hair and face accordingly.