M2M Day 40: The Portrait Drawing Cheat Sheet

This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For December, my goal is to draw a realistic self-portrait with only pencil and paper.

Here is my “Portrait Drawing Cheat Sheet”, which features step-by-step instructions on how to draw a portrait.

These steps are based on the excellent portrait drawing course by Vitruvian Studio, which I highly recommend you purchase if you are serious about learning how to draw.

The Instructions

1. Mark the top of the head. Arbitrarily draw a line towards the top of the page. This represents the top of the head.
2. Mark the bottom of the chin. Arbitrarily draw a line near the lower third of the page. This represents the bottom of the chin.
3. Mark the notch of the neck. On the subject, using your pencil as a guide, measure the distance from the lowest point of the head to the notch of the neck. Determine how many of these distances can fit inside the vertical distance of the head. Use this is as guide to draw a horizontal line towards the bottom of the page to represent the notch of the neck.
4. Find the highest point of the head. Arbitrarily determine a point on the top line. This represents the highest point of the head. Often, on the subject, this point sits far back on the head.
5. Find the lowest point of the chin. Using your pencil as a guide, determine the angle from the highest point of the head to the lowest point of the chin. Draw a line at this angle from the highest point of the head (as marked on the page) down towards the bottom of the chin line. Draw a dash where these lines intersect. This intersection represents the lowest point of the chin.
6. Find the leftmost boundary. Identify the leftmost boundary on your subject. Determine the angle to this leftmost point from the highest point, and draw a line at that angle from the highest point towards the leftmost boundary on the page. Do the same from the lowest point. Draw a marking where these two lines intersect. This intersection represents the leftmost boundary. The technique used to find this boundary is called triangulation.
7. Find the rightmost boundary. Again, triangulate from the highest and lowest points to find the rightmost boundary of the head.
8. Check the angle. On the subject, use your pencil to find the angle between the leftmost and rightmost boundaries. Check if this angle matches the angle represented on the page. If not, retriangulate and check again.
9. Draw the outer-boundary of the head and hair. Triangulate points around the head and connect them with straight lines. Once the general shape seems right, smooth out the kinks. Check the angles between various points on the subject and on the page to make sure everything looks right. If there seems to be inconsistencies, retriangulate and adjust. Do the same for the hair line.
10. Draw the vertical center line. Pick some central point that looks like its on the vertical center line. Triangulate from outer-points inwards to find this central point. Check the angle from the bottom/center of the chin to this point. Use this as a guide to draw in the entire vertical center line. As the center line approaches the top of the head, it typically flattens, as it rounds back behind the head.
11. Draw the level of the eyes. The level of the eyes typically falls about halfway between the top and bottom of the head. Use this as a starting point. Draw in this level, and then check angles to confirm. Move up or down until everything checks out.
12. Draw in the level of the brows and bottom of the nose. If you divide the face length into thirds, typically the level of the brows fall on the upper third line and the level of the nose falls on the bottom third line. Use this as a starting point. Draw in these level, and the check angles to confirm. Move the level up or down until everything checks out.
13. Draw in the level of the start of the nose. The nose begins somewhere between the level of the brows and the level of the eyes. Gauge where this is and draw it in.
14. Draw in the bottom and middle of the lips. If you divide the distance between the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin into halves, the level of the bottom of the lips typically falls at the halfway point. Use this as a starting point to draw in this level. Then, gauge where the middle of the lips falls relative to the distance between the bottom of the lips and the bottom of the nose. Draw that in.
15. Adjust the center line for the nose. Starting from the level of the start of the nose, adjust the center line so its angle matches the center line of the nose. Typically this will be in two parts. The angle outwards from the level of the start of the nose to the peak of the nose, and the angle inwards from the peak of the nose to the bottom of the nose.
16. Adjust the center line for the mouth. The mouth typically has some volume, which pushes the center line forward. Adjust the center line forward below the nose to account for the volume in the mouth.
17. Draw in the shape of the eyes and eye sockets. Triangulate the corners of the eyes, and then draw in the complete shapes. Do the same for the lids and the eye sockets.
18. Draw in the shape of the brows. Triangulate the corners of the brows, and then draw in the complete shapes.
19. Draw in the shape of the nose. Triangulate the peak of the nose and the wing of the nose. Then, draw in the complete shape.
20. Draw in the shape of the mouth. Triangulate the corners of the mouth. Then, draw in the complete shape.
21. Draw in the level of the chin. Triangulate the level of the chin, and draw a line to distinguish the shape.
22. Draw in the shape of the ear. Triangulate points of angle-change around the ear. Connect these points with appropriately angled lines, and then smooth out the kinks.
23. Draw in shadow shapes. Identify shapes of main shadow areas. Triangulate their boundaries and draw them in.
24. Darken the shadow shapes. Lightly shade in the shadow areas of the portrait. Use a soft, clean paint brush to smooth out the material on the page. This will introduce some 3-dimensionality to your portrait, which should help you better visualize if anything doesn’t seem quite right. If there is something that seems incorrect, fix it.
25. Detail the eyes. Draw in the iris, pupils, and other details.
26. Detail the nose. Draw in the nostrils and other details.
27. Detail the lips. Smooth out the shape of the lips.
28. Detail the ear. Draw in some of the main inner land marks.
29. Key the drawing. Identify the lightest and darkest tones on the subject, and add these tones to the page.
30. Modeling an area. Pick an area of the head (like the forehead), and detail some of the main places of tone-change. Identify and add in the main light and dark areas. Using a shading stump and the necessary pencils, fill in the transition tones. To better see the shapes of highlights and shadow, squint your eyes until the face isn’t recognizable as a face, but rather a collection of tonal blobs.
31. Model the remaining areas. Continue as above until all areas are modeled.
32. Sign it. And you’re done.

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Max Deutsch is an obsessive learner, product builder, guinea pig for Month to Master, and founder at Openmind.

If you want to follow along with Max’s year-long accelerated learning project, make sure to follow this Medium account.