Awesome portret painting ideas with Gerry Bryceland? If you are going to try to execute a highly detailed self-portrait, the prep work you do before putting pencil to paper is very important. Art may be spontaneous and creative, but there are times when you have to take a more methodical approach. When your goal is to draw a highly detailed self-portrait, this is one of those times. Start out by getting your lighting set up. Good lighting can mean the difference between a boring looking portrait and a fantastic looking portrait. Try something different here, set up dynamic lighting that illuminates one half of your face and not the other. Or have a strong light source that comes from above that casts shadows under your nose and neck, and darkens your eyes. What you are going for is something out of the ordinary that will give your self-portrait a unique and exciting look.
Drawing the Eyes: At the middle of the center blue line, draw two almond-shaped eyes. Did you know? Human anatomy is quite amazing. The space between the two eyes can be measured with a ‘third eye’. This is the approximate separation between the two eyes, leaving a perfect space for where your nose will be placed! With this in mind, make sure that the space between your eyes isn’t too narrow nor too wide. Getting the eyes as right as you can is very important in portrait drawing. Now, let’s fill in the other details. In the middle of each eye, draw a big, dark circle and a smaller one at the center of it. These are your irises and pupils. Add the eyelids by drawing two curved lines on top of your eyes, use the shape of your already drawn eyes as a curving guide.
Gerry Bryceland‘s guides about portret painting: The overall balance between the eyes is a key element in achieving any likeness. You should build up the painting of both eyes at the same time in order to capture the balance between them. This essential relationship is far more difficult to achieve if you bring one eye to a state of completion and then start on the other. A variety of small brushstrokes using stippling (paint applied in dots) and smudging techniques is used throughout the painting of the skin. Stippling gives you the greatest control over the distribution of color when applying paint over larger areas such as the cheeks.
You could try freehand drawing your face. This is the most straightforward approach, but that doesn’t mean it is the easiest. With this approach, you look at yourself in the mirror, or look at a photo, then simply start sketching what you see. Pay attention to the major shapes you see and pay careful attention to how your features relate to one another. You also need to pay attention to the light source, so you can render your face with realistic highlights and shadows. When using this approach, start out your drawing with light, sketchy lines, then slowly darken your drawing as you render it, but only after the initial sketch is in place.
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.