Gerard Bryceland and the climb of a portrait painter? Drawing with graphite is a less messy material, which is an advantage if you don’t feel like finishing a drawing, then having to spend a fair amount of time scrubbing your hands, arms, and cleaning up your work area. There are different levels of hardness available with graphite pencils, which gives you the ability to make light marks, as well as deep shadows. If you need to lay down a lot of graphite to establish shadows, or for your background, you could use powdered graphite. There is also water-soluble graphite available that you can use to create beautiful washes that can add a unique element to your self-portrait. The one main drawback of using graphite is the reflective sheen it produces in the light.
Drawing The Eyebrows: On top of the eyes, draw your desired shape of eyebrows. Eyebrow shapes vary from person to person and come in all shapes and sizes, so you can freely explore this if you want. If you prefer to copy from a reference, observe your model, or look closely in the mirror (if you are your own reference) to closely copy the shape of the eyebrows. A typical eyebrow would be slightly arched in the end and tapering into fine points. It usually starts alongside the inside corner of your eyes, but you can easily adjust this depending on each person’s individual proportions. Pay close attention to the thickness and thinness of your eyebrows. Later on, it will be easier to fill this in with individual hair strands, you can draw some now if it helps you visualize it.
Gerard Bryceland‘s recommendations on 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 Gerry 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.