Drawing Faces: An Expressive Approach to Portrait Illustration

1. An Introduction: Our brains are wired to look for faces, so much so that they find faces where there aren't any. This is why portraiture is such a powerful art form. It's what we're most drawn to and what we can most deeply connect with. Hi. My name is Al and I'm a portrait artist and illustrator based in Florida. I've been creating portraits for over five years and I've been sharing my artistic journey over on Instagram @lilstarnerd. I love making my artwork colorful and expressive to reflect the way I see the world. When I draw a portrait, my focus is on capturing the beauty that I see in this subject. I try to add a bit of myself or my perspective into my work and I looked for ways I can connect to the subject in order to make it feel more personal and full of life. I often focus a lot on the eyes, the windows to the soul, or features that make them unique. In this class, you'll learn an expressive approach to portraiture and how facial features like the eyes or mouth can be used to make that portrait more striking and lively. Throughout the process, we'll cover how to choose and break down a reference photo, basic sketching and shading techniques with a series of exercises, effective techniques for measuring proportions, how to add your unique perspective by emphasizing certain features. Finally, how to use color as a narrative device to finalize your portrait. This class is great for artists of all skill levels. We'll cover some sketching basics to ensure that even beginners are ready to create, but we'll also talk about ways to upgrade current skill levels. By the end of the class, you'll have an approach you can use to tackle any subject to create more expressive illustrations and infuse more of your own perspective into your work. I'm so excited to share my passion for portraiture with you and I can't wait to see you in the next lesson. 2. The Class Project: [MUSIC] The final project of this class is to create your very own portrait. To help you along that journey, I created a class guide book. This book will break down all the skills that you've learned and help you apply them individually and then bring it all together for the class project. This book includes key takeaways from the lessons, diagrams, examples and practice sheets, and plenty of sketching space. For the final project, I want you to have fun and make a portrait that you're excited about, but I will be looking for some key elements. I'll be looking for an interesting and dynamic reference photo, accurate proportions, clear emotion and expression, and the purposeful color palette, but remember that the most important thing is that you're excited and passionate to create. Make sure to share your progress in the guidebook as you follow along the lessons in the project gallery, and of course, share your final portrait as I'm so excited to see what you create. [MUSIC] 3. Expressive Approach to Portraiture: So many artists make portraits, but not every artist knows how to make a portrait unique and expressive. The key to beautiful and unique portrait pieces are a lot of skill and a lot of thought. I develop my process to approaching portraiture over years of practice. I'm going to share that process with you to get where you want to be a little faster. I've always loved making portraits and it's always been what I've been drawn to as an artist. I've always loved looking at faces, watching people talk to see how they move, and see how the light plays on their faces. In short, faces are what I'm passionate about. Over my many years of practicing making portraits, I picked up on things along the way. I learned to ask myself specific questions that helped me get to where I want to be. For example, what is the goal for this portrait? What expression do I want it to have? What story am I trying to tell? Having any old portrait is fine and good, but making a portrait that makes you feel something, or can tell a story is far more exciting. Asking myself questions like these help me make a lot of decisions throughout the process. Another thing that I've learned that it's very important when practicing portraiture, is determining what you can do to make this portrait unique to you. I'm sure many of us have a Pinterest account, and a lot of times we all end up using the same references. Is it really that exciting to make the same portrait that 20 other people have made? When I go into a portrait knowing that I need to add my own unique perspective and twist on things, it makes it a lot easier to feel more connected to the portrait. In the end, I want a product that I feel connected to and feel ownership of. I want this portrait to be my own. As I'm choosing references, I ask myself, how can I make this portrait mine? As I'm drawing the portrait, I continue asking myself that question, what tweaks can I make that make it more unique to me? As you practice portraiture, you'll develop an eye for certain things. You'll be able to find reference photos more easily, and within those reference photos, you'll be able to pick out features that you want to highlight. Whenever I look at a reference photo, I look for one key feature that really stands out to me that I'd like to emphasize. Whether it's the color in the portrait, expression, lighting and shading, or even something like face paint, makeup, things like that. I've also learned that not all portraits are created equally, and oftentimes you'll need different mediums depending on the reference you choose. Some references are more suited towards gouache or watercolor, while some are better for oil or colored pencil. When choosing your reference photo, think about what medium will be best to highlight this reference. Like I said, I've been practicing portraiture for years, and I've been able to break down my process into a few major steps. These steps are warming up, sketching, finalizing my sketch, adding shading or color, and adding final details. I find this process to be very intuitive and could work for anyone, but I absolutely encourage you to have fun with your portraits, and follow your artistic instincts as you continue your portraiture practice after this class. 4. What to Look for in a Reference: A great reference photo is the first building block to a beautiful portrait, but they can be tricky to find. There are a lot of elements that make up a good reference photo, and now we're going to talk about what those elements are. Using and working from references is super-important for building your mental rolodex a facial anatomy. Not only will references help us create a beautiful portrait now, but learning to use references and how to understand them is super important for creating a foundation for learning to draw from imagination. Using references are a fundamental part of art skills and all of the greats used references. We can too. That being said, it can be hard to find the right reference, especially for something like a portrait when the subject is only one thing. I'm going to walk you through a large array of reference photos to help you learn how to pick one and learn what to avoid. Here's a board of reference photos with many references to choose from. Before we discuss what we're actually looking for, let's discuss what we're not looking for. If we're being honest, portraits can be pretty boring. As beautiful as any face could be, it's not always interesting to look at two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. When we're looking for a reference photo, we want some extra element to add that interest, because without that interest, we get something like this. It's a nice photo, but when we look at her face, there's not much to look at. She's not making a particularly interesting expression. There's not much contrast to her face. Despite being in a bunch of leaves, there's no interesting shadows on her face. There's not much emotion in her eyes. There's no story here. Here is another example of what I would consider a boring reference photo. This is a perfect example of what I hate in reference photos. No part of her face is obscured. We're looking head on at her so we can see all of her facial features. Except for this little tilt of the head, we're not really seeing many different angles or an interesting face tilt. Her skin is perfectly smooth. There's no texture or anything interesting there and she has no expression on her face. There's no interesting lighting or shading. There's no contrast and there's nothing really to look at. Basically, if it looks like it could be a perfume or jewelry ad in a magazine, it's probably not a great reference photo. Now let's look at some examples of some great reference photos. This to me is beautiful. Not only is the head at a slight angle, but there's amazing shadow and color here. While she's still not showing much emotion, that's something that we could play up on our own. There's a lot to work with here. Great highlights, great contrast, great cast shadows, we've got strong bold lines, and soft fluid lines. Here's another photo that I think would work really well despite having a lot of the same issues that those previous photos had. We're looking head-on, there's not much emotion, but there's so much lighting contrast. It's creating these really interesting shapes on his face that would be a lot of fun to play with. Here is a great photo. Not only are there interesting colors, but her head is at an angle that obscures one of her facial features. The angle and the lighting make for some beautiful shadows and lines, not to mention her face has freckles. That's really interesting and fun to draw. She's got a great expression on her face. Overall, this is an amazing reference. Here's another example. Again, we're looking for at least one of those elements of tilt, shadow, light, texture. In this photo, we have a slight angle to the head, but we also have those freckles. Despite otherwise being a somewhat flat portrait, those freckles add a lot of visual interest. Here's a photo that uses a very strong expression. When you have things like wrinkles in a face or a smile lines or even when you squish your face, that adds a lot of interest to a photo. The thing is a photo like this, where the skin is perfectly airbrushed and smooth can seem really appealing. You think that this might be easier to draw because there's not much texture to worry about, but the truth is trying to accurately capture this very smooth and large, expensive cheek is very difficult. When you have things like wrinkles and smile lines and creases in the face, that actually gives you something to draw. It's way easier to deal with these creases and the contrast that that creates than it is to deal with one smooth gradient. Overall, what we're looking for is at least one major element to our reference photo that makes it different than this, whether that be harsh lighting to cause shadow and extreme expression, wrinkles, freckles or some sort to the skin, overall, something that breaks up the face so it's not one large shape. The key for someone who's more of a beginner is finding a reference that has enough detail but not too much detail that it's overwhelming. Something like this might be a great example. There's interest to the face, but not so much so that it would be overwhelming and you would lose track of it. Whereas a photo like this might be a little too detailed. Like I said, overall, it's a lot about preference, different subjects, different lighting, different poses, etc, will inspire different people and inspire them differently. As long as the photo speaks to you and you're excited about it, that's what matters most because that will translate into your portrait. Now it's time to go find a reference photo for yourself to use throughout this class. I recommend choosing a few different ones to work from throughout the class. If you're having difficulties finding reference photos that you like, I've put a few in the resource section of the project gallery. Now that you know how to pick out a reference photo that speaks to you, where do you go from there? The next step is to learn to visually understand that reference and translate it onto paper. [MUSIC] 5. Breaking Down References: [MUSIC] Now that we've picked a few good reference photos, we're going to take a closer look at them. We want to try to break them down in a way that's easier for us to understand and translate into the beginnings of a portrait. I have a bunch of reference photos in here that we're going to break down. I'm doing this digitally so I can better demonstrate to you. This is something that you can do digitally, you can do traditionally, there are pages in your guidebook for this, but over time, this should be something that you learn to do visually without actually having to draw it out. Now the goal here of breaking down a reference photo is to better familiarize ourself with it so that when it comes time to drawing it, we can do a better job. We want to break down this reference photo into something we better understand. Looking at it now, it's a lot to deal with. There's a whole lot going on here. We can't possibly draw every single pore, every single little hair, and it's a lot of visual information to take in. We want to break it down into its parts. There are a couple of ways to break a reference down. Here, there's not a whole bunch of contrast. If we want to do contrast, we can see there's a triangle here, there's a little shape here, there's one on the nose, but overall there's not a lot of contrast to look at. Instead, let's break this down in shapes. Overall, we see there's a pretty distinct shape for her skull here. We have a pretty distinct shape for her ear. When we look at the eyes, here's a great example of a whole lot of visual information. Eyelashes, eyelid folds, eyebrow hairs, bags. But we don't want to worry about that. We're breaking this down. If you zoomed out or really squinted your eyes, you'd see that there is one large shape here, and here there's one large shape. The whites of the eyes make their own little shape. You can see when you zoom out, you can see the beginnings of a face. Obviously, it looks silly, but we're starting to understand where these shapes are in relation to each other. The nose, with this highlight, I see a little button nose here. If we wanted to, we could even block out this highlight here. Everyone's brain works a bit differently and breaking down by shapes might not be for you, but for some people, this might be a great way to understand what it is that you're looking at and build a plan for your portrait. Let's try another one. Here's a great example of where we can start mentally making a plan. In a future lesson, we'll talk about adding emphasis to certain features. But as we're working here, we can already start thinking about that. When I look at this reference photo, what speaks to me? What pops? For me, I'm looking at his eyes. His eyes have a lot of contrast and a lot of life and a lot of color. I'm also looking at his mustache. His mustache is super interesting visually and that might be something I want to highlight.. As I break down this reference photo, I'm going to think about what is it that I want to keep in and what do I think is information that isn't as necessary? I'm thinking about his face shape, where his features are in relation to that face shape, and what information might be unnecessary. For example, outside of the mustache, there's this facial hair and there's this facial hair. That might not be something that I find as interesting and so I might decide to leave that out. I also might decide to simplify and make this one distinct area rather than a bunch of individual hairs. I'm also noticing that there's a large highlight here, a highlight here, and a highlight here, all areas that I really want to preserve. This is also another great example of a facial feature with a lot of detail that we might want to leave out. Lips are always very detailed and they're often really hard to capture. His upper lip is pretty simple. There's two distinct areas of light and shadow. But this lower lip has a whole lot of detail. This might be another area that I decide to make one distinct shape with perhaps one little highlight. Here's a great example of a photo that can be very easily broken down by shading shapes. First of all, we have this large shape here that's all light, and a shape here that is all shadow. We have more shadow. A lot of her hair is shadow. We can block that in as one large shape if we want. Here is one large shape of shadow. Those are the major basic shapes of our reference. Now if we want to get more detailed, we can zoom in here and we can start breaking down. Here's some shadow. Here's some shadow. Shadow. We really start understanding the nuances of the face in comparison to the bigger picture. We don't want to get too caught up in individual facial features. Something that really wouldn't be productive when breaking down is simply tracing the facial features. That's not giving us any extra information that we didn't already know in order to prepare for a portrait. Let's talk about breaking down by color. It's very similar to blocking by shapes or shading, but we're going to think in terms of color this time. If I were to give you 3-4 colors, a dark, medium, a light, and a white, where would those colors go? We're going to pick out our darkest darks. Here's a darkest dark. Our nostrils, the corners of the mouth, eyelids, maybe the eyebrows. Your first instinct might disable all of this is the darkest dark. But we want to make sure we're preserving the darkest dark for really the darkest areas on the portrait for the most impact. Then we can certainly looking for the second darkest areas and the shapes that these make. Then we have our second lightest, and because this is a pretty light skin portrait, we can safely assume that all of this is going to be that area, whereas your white or your absolute lightest color will be for the highlights. With this knowledge, you should be able to break down any reference photo into its parts, shapes, or colors. This makes it way easier to not only translate it into a drawing or painting, but also to tweak or emphasize parts of the photo to make it feel more like your own. Now that you're more familiar with this reference photo, it's time to start sketching. [MUSIC] 6. Warm Up: Sketching Basics: [MUSIC] Sketching seems like a simple and basic process, but there are actually some great techniques that artists use to elevate their sketches. We're going to go over a few of those techniques to make sure that our portrait has the best fonts possible. Before we get into sketching something as complicated as a portrait, I want to go over the basics of sketching, especially when you're leaning into realism. Portraits are really complicated and they rely a lot on shading. Understanding shading techniques with graphite pencils or any other supply is really important. We're going to talk about a few of the major methods for shading. First up, we have hatching. Hatching uses a series of parallel lines to imply depth or value. Obviously, when we use something like graphite, we can use the pressure to create different values as well, which comes in handy. Something a lot of artists do, is use hatching but follow the form of a shape. If we have something with different plans, their lines might follow the direction of those plans to help imply that form. Next up we have cross-hatching. Cross-hatching takes hatching and crosses over it. This is the method that I use most often I find it very intuitive. Often it employs hatching and cross-hatching, the more you layer over a certain area, the darker it becomes. For lighter areas I'll often use hatching to fade into those whites. It's important that we're keeping our wrist loose and being much more natural with the lines. Especially when we're doing shading, we want to build up our values so we want to start as light as possible and slowly build up. Another example is stippling. Stippling uses a series of dots in order to imply value. I find this to be the least effective method and in my opinion, the ugliest method. It's often used in tattoos and comic art and it can look beautiful, but I find it's very time-consuming and things like cross-hatching and hatching are just far more easier to use. Finally, we're going to talk about blending. Blending can be done done a few different ways. I have these blending stumps here, but you can also use your fingers, paint brushes, Q-tips, or bundled up paper. Using blending is great for very realistic portraits because it helps you get those nice smooth values. The only problem is when you have to do very large areas, it can often get very patchy and you might not want to waste all that time doing blending when you could have interesting texture with hatching and cross-hatching. Another thing I recommend you have on hand if possible is a kneaded eraser. Kneaded erasers are great because you can get them into a really fine point if you want to do things like erase little lines or dots for flyaway hairs or pores. It can also be used to lighten overall areas by picking up the graphite. Now, that we've talked about those examples, I want us to use them to shade a shape. It's one thing to be able to theoretically understand these techniques and another to be able to actually use them and control them in a way to make believable form. I'd like you to practice along with me if you have a sheet for this in your guidebook, we've got six shapes here. We have a sphere and a cube for hatching, cross-hatching and blending and if you'd like to try stippling, you can do that as well. I'm using an HB pencil, but for this practice you can use whatever pencil you'd like, including a regular mechanical or Number 2 pencil. Starting out with hatching, we want to use parallel lines and we don't want this gap between them. If you like that look, absolutely go for it. But we want to block in one solid area. I'm going to follow this direction of the form here to imply form. I'm doing another pastor really dark enough that value and get rid of any gaps. Now, this part of the cube is going to be our darker side, here will be our second darkest side. I'm going to do just one layer here. For this face of the cube, going to go much lighter and leave more of those gaps to imply way less shade. Now, let's try this with a sphere. If you'd like to use rounded lines to help imply that circular form, go for it. We're going to stick to three or four major value. We're going to start with the darkest area considering a light source is coming from this direction. Again using hatching, lines all going in the same direction. Now, we're going to go with our second darkest value and we're going to go in with our lightest shade, preserving an area for the highlight. You can see how with just a few values and with only parallel lines so we can make a sphere. Now, let's try it with cross-hatching. This time we're going to start lightest and go darkest. I'm going to do one layer here to imply a really light area. Here I'm going to go a bit darker. I'm going to do another layer in the opposite direction. You can already see that that is much darker. Here we're going to do three layers. What I like about cross-hatching is it adds so much texture and visual interest and like I said, is much more intuitive. Now, we're going to do this with this sphere again with the same light source and again, I'm going to start lightest to darkest because we're building up that value. I'm going to cover one area except for where we want to preserve that highlight, then would that second shade, we're going to go in a different direction to create that cross. Finally, we're going to go in with that darker shade in another direction or even in the same direction we've already gone. You know what, I still think that's not quite as dark as it could be so I'm going to do another layer and now we're going to try blending. You've see that there's a lot of texture here, which again you might like. But if you want to go for something a bit more realistic and smooth, that's where blending works really well. I'm going to put one light coat there, slightly darker code here and I'm not picking up the pencil this time and an even darker one here. When you do light areas, you want to make sure you have a relatively clean stump. Otherwise, you might make it much darker than you intend to. Now, I'm just going to smooth it all out. Now, we're going to go in our darker area. Again, smooth that out in our darkest area. For me there's not quite enough contrast here so I'm just going to do another layer. Again, we want to build up that value. Now we're going to do the sphere and this is pretty much going to be either hatching or crosshatching or a mixture of both and then blending on top of that. It's essentially building off of the same techniques we've already used, we're just taking it that little step further. [NOISE] Now, that we've got this down, we're just going to very easily blend it out. Like I said you can build off of these, you don't have to pick one and stick to one. If I blend all this out and I decide my dark values aren't dark enough, I can come back on top scribble more on and I don't have to blend it out if I don't want to, I can employ different techniques. Before we move on, I want you to be nice and warmed up and by that I mean, having a loose wrist get those creative juices flowing and most importantly learn patience. Because it'll be using a lot of techniques like these, there's going to be a long process of building that value. We're probably going to go through a few ugly stages to get to where we want to be. Doing exercises like these and taking the time to properly warm up helps you remember to be patient throughout the process. The most important thing to remember when sketching is to keep your wrist loose and be patient. Make sure to practice these sketching methods in your guidebook. If you'd like to share your work, post it in the project gallery to share your progress with the class. Make sure to keep practicing these skills as we move forward. With these principles in mind, we've got the tools to start the skeleton of a sketch[MUSIC] 7. Sketching: Creating a Skeleton: We've got the rundown of sketching methods, but how do we use them in a portrait? The first steps of a portrait are hugely important in determining how the rest of the portrait goes. We want to start out as strong as possible and as confident as possible. Often the hardest part of any artistic process, whether you're drawing, painting, whatever is starting, no matter how much theoretical knowledge you have, no matter how prepared you are often making that first mark is very intimidating, especially with something as complex as a portrait. It can be really difficult to know how or where do I start? But in my many years of drawing portraits, I found a few ways to get rid of that fear and jump in. A major trick is what I call the circle and cross method. The circle and cross method employs a circle and some lines to give you the basic form of a head. From that forum you build off of it and create the rest of your portrait. The circle will encompass the majority of the skull or the dome of the head, and the cross are lines that imply major mid lines are structured points of the face. For example, if you wanted to draw someone looking head on, a circle would be used to capture the dome of the head and a cross would be used to show you the direction that the face is looking. We have a vertical line to show us the mid point of the face. Basically between the eyes and down the nose, this line helps us know whether the face is looking left or right. For example, if a line we're here, we would know that the head was looking off to the left. We then use at least one horizontal line to show about where the eyes are. For example because this person is looking head on, the eyeline would be about here. If they were looking down, it might be somewhere down here and if they were looking up, it might be somewhere up here. We want these lines to follow the form of the head. Some people use a lot of lines, for example here is the eyeline, here's the nose line and the mouth line. You can use as many guidelines as you want or as little as you want. I tend to use this as a starting point to warm myself up to get rid of that blank canvas or blank page fear, it helps you get a rough idea of where your head will be on the page, but you don't have to be worried about strictly sticking to it. Speaking of figuring out where this will be on the page, this is also a great way to determine how big your portrait will be. Example for this portrait, I want us to be about center of the page so I can map out where that top of the head is going to be, so I know that the head will be taking up about this area. Now we have relative placement and size of the head. If you have difficulties drawing to scale or figuring out the skill that you want to draw, and I highly recommend using this first step. In this portrait, she's looking off to the left and the mid-line of her face is, I'd say about here, and her eyeline is about here. Again, this can be super rough at. This point remember, we're warming up still, so we want our hand far back and we want to keep it loose wrist and light lines. Choose one of your references that you've picked out and practice getting down the size and shape. Try using the circle and cross method and see if that works for you. Some people prefer to go in with a really light sketch of the entire head and get a loose idea of what they want it to look like. If that's something that works for you, go for it. You can use as many sketch layers as you need. Now that we're all at the point of having a circle and cross or a very light base for our sketch, now we need to figure out where do we go from here? There are a lot of different ways that people go through making a drawing or a portrait. Some people like to start with outlines and work their way into the center of the face, and some people like to go vice-versa. Some people start in one corner and work their way down. This is another thing that can take practice, but I recommend listening to your gut what feels natural to you? I tend to work from the center outward specifically with the eyes. The eyes are the center point of the head and everything tends to line up with them in one way or another. If I start by putting in the eyes, I can work around that to figure out where everything else goes. For this sketch, I'm going to start with the eye closest to me and work that in. Again, we're keeping loose and light here because we want to keep our portraits unique and interesting to us. Don't worry about being exactly photorealistic and copying your reference, especially when we're warming up. This is about where I will start with my portrait. From here I would go through the natural steps of working out towards the outside of the face. We're using very basic and soft lines and very basic shapes to very lightly and roughly map out this portrait. We don't want to go too dark or even add too much value at this stage. As you're doing the sketch, you might want to do a few of these warm-up sketches. It's a great idea to get comfortable with your process. Now we know how to start a portrait sketch, but there's a lot more to a face than that. Before moving on to the next lesson, lay down a skeleton of your own portrait. In the next lesson, we'll talk about sketching facial features. [MUSIC]. 8. Facial Features: Do's and Don'ts: [MUSIC] Facial features are incredibly detailed anatomical structures, and getting those details right can be the making or breaking point of your portrait. Let's talk specifically about the do's and don'ts of eyes, noses, and mouths. Facial features have a lot of details, and it's really easy to get overwhelmed by those details. It's also really easy to represent facial features unrealistically. The first thing that you need to know about all of these facial features is to not use outlines. We're definitely going to use lines, especially when we're sketching our sketch is comprised of lines. But as we get further into the portrait, we're going to build off of those lines and use value. We don't rely on outlines, we want to rely on shading to imply lines. Also remember that facial features are organic structures, which means there's no straight or hard lines anywhere. There's a lot of planes, natural curves, and organic shapes. There's also not exactly even spacing. There's a lot of organic clustering. A really great example of not quite understanding this is in eyelashes. I see a lot of very beginner artists drawing eyelashes, something like this. That's just not what they look like. There's this even spacing and they're straight lines. That's not what they look like. Open up your guidebook and draw along with me as we go through these facial features. We're going to start off with an eye. Obviously, as we sketch this, we're using these lines. But these will be erased or used as a base for shading later on. Now what we don't want to do is go in with one heavy-handed line and make one distinct outline for the entire shape. Another thing that I often see people do is create a point on the outer corner of the eye, when often this lower lid is folding back underneath the top lid. We want to represent that. I'm going to draw the iris now. If you really look at a reference photo of a very close-up eye, you'll notice that the iris is actually not a perfect circle. Going to draw the pupil in. You'll also notice that the iris is made up of a bunch of little striated lines. I often see people do something like this. This is a great place to rely on shading. The outer corner is often much darker than the rest of the eye. I'm going to block that in. The upper lid also sticks out over the iris, so that top half of the eye is also going to be more shaded. If you ever have the time, I totally recommend looking at the anatomy of facial features. Because understanding the anatomy will help you draw it a lot more realistically. Based on the light source, the lower half of the eye is much lighter. Now I'm going to blend this out. I'm going to go back in with my kneaded eraser and get some of those lighter areas. Here's where implying those lines can be really fun. Finally, I'm going to go back in with my pencil and make those little lines. We're not going in with sharp lines. I'm going in with these little circular motions to create these uneven but smooth lines. Now let's move on to the top lid. The top lid can trip a lot of people up. People tend to draw eyelashes coming straight from the top lid when in reality we have the shadow underneath the top lid and a small fold of skin. Then there's the top of the eyelid. It's from this fold that the eyelashes come from. Depending on the perspective of the eye, you'll also see a lot of bending of the eyelashes. There's a lot of creases in detail in the eye. Don't be overwhelmed with it. Don't feel like you need to get all of it in. Already you can see how we're not really outlining the eye. We're using these shading techniques to imply a line here. We can take that further by shading in the white of the eye. Outlines down here won't be needed because we'll have this difference in value. If I were to shade this out, this line is now gone, but we can see that that is where the white of the eye ends. Now let's talk about eyelashes. Like I said, they come from this top fold of the eyelid, not underneath the eyelid. They also tend to grow from different places. I might have one that starts here and one that starts here. It's not all perfect. They might come down over the white of the eye, and they might go much farther up. Now the key to the movement is one swift stroke, like a Nike swoop. We want it to be as natural and organic as possible, and that can take a lot of practice. Eyelashes are really fun to do. I often add a lot more than as in the photo, or I add length. Especially in places like the lower lid, I love making them a little bit messy. One thing that is often really important is the bag beneath the eye. Here's where we're really going to be relying on shading to imply the shape. The bag is important. Oftentimes people want to leave it out because they think it's unflattering. But really this is giving a lot of information about the shape of the face. Your eye is an eyeball. There's a whole sphere underneath here that creates this eye bag and the protruding lid. Look for larger shapes of shadow and block that in with shading, rather than creating an outline of it. Be careful to preserve areas of white for nice highlights. Now let's talk about noses. Noses can be very confusing. It's very tempting to go in and put an entire outline of a nose. But when you look at someone, you don't see an outline. You see areas of shading that imply an outline. When a nose is at an angle and you can see the ridge line, oftentimes that's a great place to actually use a line. Not an outline, but a line. But creating this harsh contrast and this harsh shape can be really interesting. But when you're looking head-on and a nose, there are no harsh lines created, at least in the bridge. We really have to rely on shading. Depending on the shape of the nose, you might have more or less shading to work with. Also, of course, that depends on the light source. If the light is coming from this way, we might have a really harsh shadow here that would create a harsh line. When we talked about picking reference photos, we talked about finding harsh lighting and harsh contrast. That's because it gives us a lot more lines to work with. When you're you using soft lighting, you don't really have those harsh shadows to create shape for you. For a nose with very little contrast or harsh shadows, I'm going to start with the bottom of the nose, the nostrils. I'm going to start out my sketch here. Obviously, I'm using lines now, but we want to get rid of these later. Nostrils are often going to be a pretty dark area on your portrait, but they're not guaranteed to be. There also tends to be this plane on the ball of the nose above the nostrils, a plane that goes downwards and the plane of the ball of the nose. When drawing a nose, you really want to look for planes. For example, there is a plane of shadow here with this reference photo and a plane of highlight here. There is often a highlight somewhere here or down the bridge of the nose. If these are the corners of the eye, there's usually a plane coming from that end of the corner down to the nostrils. Being able to recognize and identify all of these planes help you figure out where the shading is going to go. Now that I've noticed all of these planes, we're going to go in and really shade this nose in. The corners of the nostrils are much darker and the bottom corners of the nose are much darker. Of course, in these photos, underneath the nose and the nostrils are very dark. While the nose can often be pretty difficult to get right, it's really fun to do. Now that I've blended, I've lost quite a bit of that contrast that I really wanted, so I'm going to go back in and add that. Here's a nose and you can see that there's no outlines, but we can still recognize it as a nose. Now we're going to move on to the mouth. Now, mouths can get very complicated. There's lots of little wrinkles, lines, highlights, shadows. Here's a great place to simplify. Unless you want to put a lot of emphasis on the mouth and that's what the highlight of the portrait is going to be, there's really no need for it to be so detailed. It's really easy to draw a mouth like this. But oftentimes our upper lip can bleed into our skin. The outer corners of the lower lip often bleed into our skin. The line that the mouth makes is often wobbly. There's little shapes there. Corners of the mouth can relay a lot of expression. I'm going to very lightly sketch in the shape of the upper lip here and the lower lip. With regular lighting, the upper lip is often in more shadow than the bottom lip, because it's angled downwards. It's in shadow while the lower lip is catching the light. There's also often these two budging areas of the lip that are often shaded around. You can see on this reference photo there's this shape right here of light. Of course, the top lip is going to cast a shadow on the lower lip. You can see this shape right here of light in this photo. Whereas here is more shaded. Again, that's because of planes of the skin. Let's draw this out, but let's do this a bit simplified. Because like I said, there's a lot of detail here. The shape of the lips or the expression that they take is another great place to play around with, add uniqueness and expression to your portrait. I'm going to go in with a layer of shading for the top lip, weak layer of shading for the bottom lip, and I'm going to preserve those lighter areas. Right here at the crest of the lower lip is often pretty in shadow, until where the chin protrudes. There's often also the shape here of the lip. Whether or not you want to include that in your shading is up to you. But I often find that it makes for some interesting shapes. We're also going to include the creasing of the corner of the mouth and the shadows that that creates, and the cupid's bow. Now I'm going to go in and blend all of this out. I'm just going to lighten up some of the areas that got a bit away from me with the shading. Now I'm going to go back in and add a bit more of that contrast and build up what I've already got here. Again, we're making the crease of the mouth pretty dark, and we'll add some of that texture in the lip. Not too much, just basically the same shape as those eyelashes coming from the crease of the mouth. We're going to do the same on the bottom lip. We don't want this to be too dark or too obvious. We want it to very naturally blend in with what we've got here already. Highlights on the lips can be really fun, but we don't want to overdo it. There we go. Some major do's and don'ts of facial features. These tips for drawing facial features should enable you to more accurately and easily draw faces and give you a boost in confidence going into a portrait. But how do we put these beautifully drawn facial features together? Before moving onto your actual portrait, practice a few variations of these features. In the next lesson, we'll talk about proportions and measuring techniques, so you can confidently place these facial features on the skeleton you've created in previous lessons. It's all coming together. [MUSIC] 9. Proportions and Measuring Techniques: [MUSIC] Proportions of the face are key to making it look realistic, no matter how beautifully drawn your facial features are, that won't matter if they're in the wrong place. In this lesson, we'll go over some measuring techniques to ensure proper proportions for an accurate and realistic portrait. It's really easy to put facial features in the wrong place, I still do it all the time. If something is a little wonky, it can actually bring a lot of personality and interest to your portrait. But, for example, we're looking at a three quarter view of a person, if one eye is here and the other is here, that might not look quite right. Or if one eye is here and one is here that might not look quite right. There are plenty of ways to get things just off enough that it feels uncomfortable. There are actual tools specifically made for something like this. They're called proportional dividers or scale tools, and they basically look like this. You can measure how far something is and translate that onto your paper. But there's a pretty easy DIY way of doing this as well. I have a very quick portrait that I recently painted to use as an example. Now, there's two different ways of using this DIY technique. One will require just the one pencil you're using and another will require some other tool, colored pencil, or whatever. Let's say this is our printed out reference, a picture, whatever. We want to transfer this onto the paper, a 1: 1 ratio. We want it to be the same size. What we're going to do is we're going to take this and start measuring. I know that my head is about this large and I'm going to make those marks here. This measuring technique is super simple. I am lining up the bottom of the pencil with the bottom of the chin and I'm grabbing it where the hairline starts and I am just making really loose rough marks and we can just keep doing that. Here is how wide the head is, here's how wide the eye is. You can basically keep doing that until you've entirely reconstructed your portrait. I don't recommend you use it for everything, but it's a great idea to get started with scale. That brings us to our next method. This is still a reference photo, but maybe it's on our phone, so it's not quite to the scale that we want to draw it out. It's no longer a 1: 1 ratio, which means we can't just measure how big this face is and translate that onto our paper. Instead, we're going to find some features on our photo to turn into our own measuring unit. I tend to go with the eye. That makes sense for me, but you might choose something different. We're going to take the edge of our pencil and I'm going to line it up with the inner and outer corners of my eye. I'm going to make note of how long that is. I can keep going back to this eye and reference how big this eye is. Even if I don't need to make a mark on my pencil, if I lose that mark, I can come back and just measure it again. With this measurement of the eye, I can now figure out, okay, how many eyes until I get to the end of the face? About two eyes. If I have my own eye here and I know it's about two eyes to the end of the face, I'm not going to try to make this eye match this eye. What I'm going to do is I'm going to remeasure the eye that I've drawn. Now I know that it's about two eyes away to the end of the face, and so we're going proportionally. By making our own measuring unit, we can figure out the scale or the distance from any place on this photo and translate it onto paper. You can figure out how many eyes tall or long the head is. Maybe the distance from the inner eye to the bottom of the nose is one eye long. Similarly, we can also make lines on our photo. If we know that the bottom of the nose is about one eye distance away from the eye. But we don't know how far into the eye it is, I can draw an imaginary line here from the corner of the nose up to the eye, and so it's about one-quarter of the way through and boom, now we have the corner of the nose. Using these measuring techniques are a great support for your drawing, but I don't recommend that you fully rely on them. If you get one measurement slightly off, your whole portrait could end up looking slightly wonky. I recommend you learn how to track with your eyes. When you track with your eyes, you're basically constantly flipping back and forth between your drawing and your reference photo. It takes some practice, but you slowly learn to measure the scale with just your eyes alone. If you draw something and it doesn't look quite right, you can use those measuring techniques that we've talked about and figure out if something is a little off. We want to sync our pencil movements with our eyes as we're looking at the reference photo. We're actually looking at the reference photo probably more than we are at the drawing. This helps us keep in mind the bigger picture. We're going to track with our eyes and use those measuring techniques to make a great sketch. But remember that the key here is proper proportions. We want to use those measuring techniques to make sure that no feature gets away from us. When we get really focused in the nitty-gritty and forget the big picture, before we know, we can draw an eye that's way too big for the face. Remember that every once in a while, take a step back, look at the big picture and use those measuring techniques. These tools and techniques can take some practice to get the hang off. I encourage you to keep practicing and learn as you go. While you're doing that, in the next lesson, we'll talk about making your portrait unique and learning how to add your own style. Before you make your final sketch, we'll discuss expression and adding your unique perspective to the illustration. [MUSIC] 10. Expression: Your Unique Perspective: [MUSIC] Being able to copy a reference photo is super impressive and can make for amazing art. But adding your own perspective to these portraits can take them to the next level. I've got a really basic sketch here of a photo that we've already looked at. Now I think this photo is really interesting. I think there's a lot of great contrast. I love the colors. I think it's a really good basic reference photo, but there's not much emotion or expression going on. But that means it's a great blank slate for you to put your own perspective on it. Whenever you look at a reference photo, you shouldn't feel trapped into copying what you see. Every reference photo should be an opportunity for you to put your own twist on what's already there. You should feel comfortable and confident in turning that reference photo into exactly what you want it to be. When you look at a reference photo, think about how you can make it your own. Oftentimes that can be exaggerating or altering the expression or facial features. This is also a great place to embrace your style and bring that into the reference photo. When we are focusing on realism and working from a reference photo, pushing the limits of realism, adding stylization, and putting your own twist on things is a great way to make it unique. Not everything has to be photo-realistic to keep the essence of a realistic portrait. When you're looking at a reference photo and you see this blank slate, you want to think about what is interesting to me. What do I want to say about this? What do I want to bring out? What do I want to highlight? When I look at reference photos, I often think about what I find beautiful about that person. I want to bring joy and beauty into the world and often that's what I end up highlighting in my portraits. In order to do that for this reference photo, I would probably really highlight his eyelashes. They're very bold and beautiful and I really love that. I would also probably edit out this facial hair below the bottom lip. Not because I don't like it, just because I think it takes away from the rest of the photo. I also want to make him a bit more smiley. His expression is a little bit dull and plain, so I want to really lift everything up to make him seem a little bit brighter and happier. Of course, I want to keep in the mustache and maybe even exaggerate the curls a bit. We're going to add in a bit of smile lines. I also really love the shading of the bags beneath his eyes. I think I want to emphasize that as well. There's a lot of contrast and I really want to keep that in here. Basically, as you're looking at your reference photo, you want to think, what do I like? What do I want to highlight? What do I want to get rid of? I love the highlights in his eyes, so I'm going to do my best to preserve those and maybe even make them bigger than they are in the photo. Remember that we've talked a lot about looking at shapes and planes and don't be afraid to exaggerate them or make them a bit harder than they are in the photo. On the cheek here, there's a bit of a triangle of light, but it does fade into the rest of the skin. It's not a harsh triangle. But I think it'd be much more interesting if it was a harsh triangle. I really like his cheekbone. I'm going to emphasize that over here. If you really like to play with light and shadow, really emphasize and push those areas. If you really like color, find places to really add the saturation. You could even enlarge in certain features. Another thing you might want to do is swap out features. find a couple of different reference photos. Maybe you like the eyes and expression on this one, but you like the nose on this one. Our goal here is to be inspired and connected to our reference photo. We want to put our passion into it and that's going to make our best outcome. If you're unsure of how to alter the expression, you can look up photos of what that expression might look like and translate that onto your reference photo. Is it realistic to make the eyes a little bit bigger? No, but it could look really fun. Remember to keep in mind the mood of your portrait. If you're trying to do something moody and dark, large eyes might not be the way you want to go. Think about how you can overall enhance your overall mood and story of your portrait by altering certain features. In this lesson, you should have picked a few elements or features of your own reference photo to highlight or alter. By now we've gone through all the basics and all the building blocks of the mental plan for the portrait. Now let's put it all together and start the sketch. [MUSIC] 11. Sketching: Putting it All Together!: [MUSIC] We've picked out a reference photo, broken down that photo, learn how to draw the features, learned the basics of sketching, and determined how to make this photo our own. Now, the next step is to put all of that into practice and start our portrait. First photo, a portrait in pencil to get ourselves warmed up for the colored portrait later, it's time to make a basic sketch using all the things that we've talked about so far. Pick a reference photo that you really like, and let's get started. I'm going to start with that basic circle and cross method. Remember to keep your wrist loose as you start on this basic sketch. Of course, remember to be patient and kind with yourself. Now is a great time to put on a podcast or a video or a movie, sit back and take time. Your sketch won't be perfect the first time and it might take a few passes. We want to take it slow and give yourself plenty of time to capture the reference photo the way we want. We're also keeping in mind that we have the freedom to exaggerate the features the way we want, and don't forget to practice your measuring techniques. Here's a great example of me using the measuring technique. I'm going to see how far apart these two eyes are, there about one eyes width. Remember that the key to sketching is to start light and build up your value so we don't want to go and heavy handed. If you have H pencils, I definitely recommend using H pencils to keep yourself from going too dark. Make sure that the only lines you're drawing are lines that really give you information that you need to know and can fill in later with shading. I love the shape of these bangs, so I'm going to really emphasize them. Also made her eyebrows a little bit angrier than they are in the photo. Here's a really quick first pass of the sketch. If you're not satisfied, you might want to lighten it up and go back over with a second pass. The more sketches you do, you lose a bit of movement, but you might get a more accurate sketch. Depending on what you're going for, it might be worth it to give it a few more tries. You can see that I'm really just blocking in shapes and using lines to emphasize where shading is going to be. We want to keep this sketch basic. We don't need a lot of extra information right now. We don't need to know where every little shadow will be or every freckle. Don't be discouraged by getting things wrong the first time. Remember to be patient. It's going to take time to get it quite the way you want it. I love the shape of these lips, so I'm really going to push that expression in them. Remember that every once in awhile step back, look at the big picture, literally get up, take a step back and look at the big picture. Squint your eyes, see if it looks the way you want it to look. If anything looks a little wonky, using those measuring techniques to double-check your proportions. Oftentimes things will look or feel a little off and we can't quite put our finger on it until we start checking those proportions. I've got a rough sketch here, so I'm going to really lightly block in shading where I know there's going to be a lot of contrast. I already want to start working on getting rid of some of those lines. Again, not at all going too dark. We really want to focus on starting light and building up that value. Now that I've blocked in the shading, I can tell that this eye is pretty far away from where I want it to be. We're going to move that over. That's a great example of why we want to do a really light layer of shading pretty early on. Having that layer of shading is going to give us a lot of information that we didn't have before. Because we're avoiding outlines, we don't quite know where this plane of the faces compared to this eye. When we start blocking in that shading, we can see that some of these shapes aren't matching up with the photo. Shapes that we didn't have before based on just the sketch, I really want to exaggerate this hook in the nose, eyebrows, and the anger in them, and the shape of the lips. I want them to be a bit more pouty, a bit more expressive. As you're working on your portrait. Think about what overall expression or story you want to tell. Also look at the portrait and thinking about what features you're drawn to and using all that information, think about what you want to exaggerate or alter. We've got the bones of the sketch down, but this isn't all there is to it. In the next lesson, we'll continue building this SketchUp to a more complete level in pencil. Once you're satisfied with this stage of your sketch, you can move on to the next lesson. [MUSIC] 12. Finalizing Your Pencil Sketch: [MUSIC] Let's continue working on this portrait, building a value and making it beautiful. We've got a basic sketch down. We've got our shadows mapped out. We have the beginnings of a portrait. What we're going to do now is basically finalize this portrait. Now's the time to really add that value, really push the contrast for emphasis, exaggerate the emotion and expression and add any stylistic choices that you want. I'm bringing out my 2B pencil at this stage. If you have a darker lead, I would definitely recommend using it at this point. But you can also just keep going with whatever you're already sketching with. Here's where we really want to think about preserving highlights and where we might want to change or tweak things or make things darker or lighter to achieve our overall effect. I like to start with the eyes and work my way out. But remember that we're also building value. So we're not too worried about getting our darkest darks yet. Remember that we're avoiding outlines. Anytime you draw a line, it should imply some shading or be the edge of a shadow. You also don't have to strictly stick to your sketch if you see that a line is maybe wrong, or you'd like to do it differently. Feel free to go with the flow. Tweak and edit as you go and constantly adjust if you feel the need to. [MUSIC] I'm going to keep the hair really simple because that's not what we're focusing on today, but I do want to block some of that in. This is a great example of where we're altering our reference photo instead of keeping every element in, like the hand and the hair, we're narrowing down to just what we want to focus on. Having unfinished edges or using negative space to your advantage is a great way to make the photo a bit more unique. We've got a pretty decent value mapping down. This would be a great time to go in with a blending stump to really smooth this out. Once you do that, you can go back with another layer. Oftentimes when we use the blending stump, we lose a lot of detail and a lot of the contrast. We could also keep it to just this basic hatching or crosshatching. I'm not going to blend it, but I am going to still go back and add a lot of value. There's really not a major contrast except for maybe about here and it looks a little off because that's the only major place. To give this more impact and a lot more expression, we really want to push that contrast. Whether your reference photo has dramatic lighting or not, you still want to look for places like areas of high contrast that you can really emphasize. I also want to push her expression a bit more. I don't think she's looking quite angry enough for me. I'm going back and really trying to push this whole area further and further into shadow to really emphasize the contrast between this half of her face and this half of her face. [MUSIC]. When it comes to editing your photo, you also might decide that in a situation like this, we might want to lose a lot of detail back here. We could spend a lot of time trying to retain all of this detail, but it might make for a much more impactful photo to obscure this a bit more. As you work, you'll realize that you're going to have to go back and rework areas that you felt might already be done. As I've added a whole lot of value and contrast here, I'm realizing there's a lack of contrast here where it could benefit to have some. I'm picking up a B pencil so somewhere between that HB and 2B that I was working with before, just to add in those areas that need value, but not quite as dramatically. [MUSIC]. I've got the face where I want it to be but now I want to work on the overall mood of the portrait to really emphasize the dark anger mood that I'm going for. I'm going to go in and work a bit more of this hair in, not for detail, but to really darken up the page. Having this hair over here does provide the information of the line of the face, but besides that, it's really just emphasizing the mood. We're using it as a tool for expression rather than information of the portrait. Think about how you can manipulate elements in your photo, like hands, clothing, or other props even hair, to enhance the overall feeling of your portrait. There we go. We have a complete expressive portrait in pencil. Now that we've gone through the full portrait process from beginning to end to make ourselves comfortable with it, let's move on to the final colored portrait. Finalize your sketches and post them to the project gallery so we can all see where we're at before we move on to color. [MUSIC]. 13. Sketching with Coloring in Mind: [MUSIC] The sketch for a portrait impeller is going to be a bit different than what we've been doing. I'll be using a red pencil because this will be lighter and will blend with any coloring supplies that I use, but a gray pencil will work just as well. We've talked a lot about building value and adding contrast, but we're not going to do that this time. This is going to act as a guide or a roadmap for adding color. We want to keep only the vital information in this sketch. We also want to make sure that our lines are a little bit more clear and a little less messy. Whatever you use to sketch, but especially if you're using graphite, make sure to keep it light. We don't want to go too dark and we don't want to add too much. Because like I said, this is going to be the sketch for adding color. We're going to do a sketch of the face, but we're not going to worry too much about adding value to the entire thing. I'm starting in the exact same way with the circle and cross method and I'm just going to start mapping in the features. As I'm sketching, I'm thinking about what I might want to alter or emphasize in this portrait. I really love the glowy do we look here and I want to emphasize that serine feeling of basking in the sun. I'm going to change her expression to be a little bit happier. I'm going to do a second pass at this sketch. To do that I'm going to put my reference right next to my photo so I can constantly look back-and-forth and pay more attention to my reference photo and track with my eyes to make sure I'm doing an accurate sketch. [MUSIC] I want to line up any of the areas that have gotten too dark and now I want a very lightly map in some of that shadow. I don't need too much. I just want to give myself enough information to do the color. It's a very minimal sketch here. Here's a really basic sketch with color in mind. Our sketch this time was a bit different. We kept our values lighter and didn't go into as much detail. Now that we have this sketch done with the idea of adding color in mind, let's get to the actual color. But first, make sure to post this version of your sketch in the project gallery and let me know if you prefer working in red pencil or gray pencil. 14. Limited Palette: Adding Color!: [MUSIC] Adding color to a portrait is such a great way to enhance your piece, highlight certain elements, or add perspective and personality. We're going to talk about using a limited color palette to add to our portrait to help convey the overall story. Now, we're going to talk about using a limited color palette. We're using our color palette to give a base color to the sketch and then enhance certain areas. We're not going for an entirely perfect, realistic-rendered portrait, so we don't need too many colors. I think most people will find a good spot between 5-6 colors. I'll walk you through my color palette and explain why. I have my lightest color. This is for the base skin tone. Basically, this is going to be the base of my sketch. This is my enhancement color. Basically, this is where I'm going to add a lot of saturation, this is going to be used to enhance certain elements of the piece. Here is a mid-tone shading color, a darker shading color, and a color for my darkest darks. If you're trying to color more realistically, you're going to want a light tone, a medium tone, and a dark tone. Theoretically, three colors is all you need. But generally, you're going to want some variation, so maybe two lights, one medium, and two darks, or some variation of that, which puts you at about five colors. I have six because I chose an eye color which will also add to that enhancement. It's a bit of a highlight color, it's very different, so it'll pop out. I also chose this color palette because they think it's going to really nicely highlight that serine feeling that I'm going for. I want to really capture that feeling of soaking in the sun, which is where these colors will come in. Because these are so saturated, I wanted these to be a bit more desaturated to help that contrast. When you're choosing your color palette, there's different ways you can go: You can try to go more realistically, in which case, I recommend finding a way to saturate or change it a little bit to make it more exciting. Or you might pick your mood specifically inspired by the mood that you want to go for. For example, if you're making something dark and moody, you'll want a darker color palette. No matter what you're doing, remember that your color palette is supposed to enhance the story that you want to tell, it needs to help highlight the emotion that you're showing. There's different ways to add color to your sketch. I'm going to basically color the entire thing. But if you'd like, you can build up your sketch to a more complete level and use color to enhance certain areas. You could have a fully rendered sketch portrait and only add color to the eyes of the lips. If you're going to be coloring the entire thing, like me, we want to save the most saturated areas and the most contrast areas for the areas that we want to highlight. I'm going to jump right in. I'm going to be using the chisel nib just to help cover that surface area. I'm also going to try my best to preserve highlights where I can. Remember that you're not going for hyper-realism with color, we are using this to enhance the sketch. Because we're using a limited color palette, we can't get every single tone variation, we're just doing what we can with the colors that we have. You can see that the sketch shows through pretty easily, which is why we wanted to be very light-handed with the sketch, especially if you're using something like watercolor or any other transparent or light medium. Now, there's a lot going down here in the shoulders and the neck, there's a lot of collarbone, but that's not really what I'm going for in the portrait. I don't want to add a lot of unnecessary visual clutter or detail, so I'm just going to round this out like a bust. Now, I want to go for these really saturated colors a little bit later in the process. Because this is also my mid-tone, it'll be used as a transition between the shadows and the light areas, but I also want to save this for when it's time to really punch up areas that I want to highlight. Instead, I'm going to move right into the shadow and I'll blend it out a little bit with this color, but again, I want to save this for later. This is my lightest dark color so I'm also going to use it to basically map out all of the dark colors. Just like in the sketch phase, we're building up on value. I want to embrace the hard lines of this shadow to really emphasize the idea that we're basking in the sunlight, that we've got this really harsh lighting source, so I'm not super worried about blending it out really nicely. Just like I said, really use mapping in those darker areas. [MUSIC] I'm going to take this color as our mid-tone and soften some of those areas blended out a little bit, but really I want to already start adding in that saturation. Remember this is my color for really enhancing and highlighting certain areas. I'm using it as a mid-tone, but I also really want to use it in areas that I really, really want to draw attention to. In places that I maybe don't want as much attention, I'm going to blend it out a little bit. Here where I'm more employing it as a mid-tone rather than a saturated, exciting color, I don't really need it to be as harsh or as bright. But here, I'm going to use it in the eye, and here's where I do really want to draw attention. I love drawing attention to the eyes; the eyes are truly the window to the soul and I love to emphasize that in my portraits, so I want to put a lot of this saturation around the eyes. We're going to go in with the eyes. Here is where we really want to add that contrast because this is an entirely different color. This is the base, and now we're going to go in with our darker color. We're going to go and add all those shadows, but we're going to start with the eye because we really want to focus on adding that intense contrast because this is where we want the most attention. Where you want the most attention is where you're going to want your most saturated colors, your most different colors, and the most contrast. [MUSIC] Now, the hair is not the most important part of this portrait, so I'm really messily blocking it in. If it's something that you do want to highlight, then you're going to want to put more time and detail into it, but for me, this is just distracting information from the highlight of the portrait, which is the eyes and the face. Finally, we've got our darkest color. Remember what I said about highest area of contrast. Because this is our darkest color, we want to preserve it to only the really important areas, or areas where it's going to add important depth. Because I really want to highlight the eyes, I'm going to make sure that I use the darkest color here. But even so, I'm going to use it sparingly. I also want to add it here for that extra bit of contrast in some areas of the hair. But we're going to blend it out up here because I don't want there to be obvious contrast, I just want to add some depth. Taking a look at it, there are some places that aren't quite the way I want them to be, so I'm going to go back and fix some of those details. This is definitely a process, you're not going to get it right the first time, so don't be alarmed if you do have to go back and change and edit things [MUSIC] There we go. We have colored a portrait with a limited color palette. We've got a beautiful, expressive portrait that we have put so much time and effort into, but it's not done yet. Before we can be finished, there's one last step which happens to be my favorite, final details. Post a picture of your portrait now to the project gallery so we can compare it to the final version later, so you can see how much these final details really add to your portrait and make it pop. [MUSIC] 15. Final Details and Highlights: [MUSIC] This final step is such a fun part of the process. We don't want to overwork our portrait, but now is a great time to look for those final details we can add to really make it come together and feel complete. We've got the basic color here, but there's obviously a lot of detail and interest missing. Right now, it's looking a little flat. It's saturated, it's pretty, but there's something raw missing and that's where my favorite step comes into play. We want to stick to the limited color palette, but we're going to add a few extra supplies here. You want some white. I have a white colored pencil, but a lot of people like gel pen. I personally prefer the white pencil. I have a black pencil. Any dark color will do. I sometimes use blue or purple. But I think black will go well with this color palette. Then I have a darker skin tone color. Now to finalize this portrait, we want to really bring it to life with those final details. I love to actually go overboard. We don't want to overwork our portrait, but it's hard to do that here because we're just going to be adding little tiny details, for example, highlights, pores, wrinkles, freckles, scars, flyaway hairs, eyelashes, things like that. Those little "imperfections" that really make us look like real people. I'm going to start with the highlights because I find them to be super fun. You definitely want to make sure you have a highlight in the eye. I'm also going to add some other light here and really just start adding highlights, highlighted eyelashes, some eyebrow hairs, on the nose. Even if it's not actually in the photo, just wherever I think it might look pretty, really. One thing that's great about using a colored pencil for this is, it's much more subtle than a harsh gel pen and so you can really have fun adding a lot of more subtle highlights in. I'm also going to add some highlights in the hair. I'm going to take my darkest pencil and use that wherever I want to emphasize some very serious contrast, so I've lost the edge of the face a bit and I'm just going to very lightly add that back in. Basically, wherever you want to emphasize any lost contrast or push it even further. I'm also going to add freckles. She has a few in the photo, but I'm going to add even more. I'm also noticing that I didn't really add in a lot of this contrast that's up on the forehead and it's looking a little wonky, so I'm going to add that in. We're doing whatever we can to add some personality, add our own perspective here and make it feel a little bit more lively. Not necessarily lifelike, just lively. I also want to go back into the hair and add some flyaways. Then I want to take this darker skin tone color and use it to map out any of the features that got lost. We're also using this to add some of the details that we couldn't really get with marker, but aren't dark enough to need a black colored pencil. As you're doing this, think about what you can bring forward, what you can push back. Add crispiness to any features that were lost and really work on highlighting the areas of the face that you want to highlight. Before you know it, you've got a beautiful expressive portrait. This lesson gave you a few ideas for finalizing your portrait and adding that last-minute dose of personality and the result is a beautiful and unique portrait. Make sure to post your final portrait to the Project Gallery. I'm so excited to see what you came up with. [MUSIC] 16. Conclusion: [MUSIC] Congratulations on making it to the end of the class. We've covered a lot in this class, from reference photos, sketching fundamentals, facial anatomy, color palettes and expression. Now you have a beautiful and creative portrait of your very own to be proud of and to share with people. Feel free to share it online and be excited about what you've created here. Of course, you're leaving this class with the techniques and tools to keep practicing and improve your skills. I hope you've learned a lot in this class but if you only take away one thing, I hope it's this, adding your own perspective and creative twist to a portrait is the best way to elevate your portrait and make it unique. Make sure to share your beautiful portraits in the project gallery so we can all see what we've accomplished. If you do want to post it online, make sure to tag me on Twitter or Instagram @Lilstarnerd or use the #lilstarnerdskillshare. While you're at it, make sure to check me out on Instagram, YouTube or Twitter so you can stay up to date with my next Skillshare class. Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I'll see you in the next one. [MUSIC]