Drawing a Portrait (Cross-Hatching Technique)

I know that drawing a realistic human portrait is one of the most difficult tasks for any artist. Today I want to tell about how I drew my last portrait of a woman for my free portrait drawing group on Facebook. I will also give some explanation about each drawing stage. I hope this post will be kinda helpful for people who want to know more about how to draw portraits. I used my favorite cross-hatching technique to draw this portrait.

By the way, many people wonder what kind of pen I use for drawing cross-hatching. Well, I prefer using Uni Pin Fine Line pens 0.1 - 0.5 mm for this drawing style.

The process of this portrait drawing can be divided into three stages.

How I draw a realistic portrait. Stage 1

At the first stage I used a hard 2Н pencil to create outlines of the future portrait, to place the image on a sheet of paper and to mark position of the main details of the face (mouth, nose, eyes, ear). I also made rough hatching to preliminary mark shape of the shaded parts of the portrait. I marked borders of future highlights on the eyes, nose and lips.

How I draw a realistic portrait. Stage 2

At the second stage I put cross-hatching on each midtone area enhancing shadings where necessary and accentuating some details. It is advisable to choose direction of hatchings which corresponds to the form of the area you are working on to make the image more vivid. The highlighted areas remain untouched.

How I draw a realistic portrait. Stage 3

At the third stage I used a 2B pencil for elaborating shadings and enhancing contrast where necessary in order to create volume of the portrait. I deliberately focused attention on highlights on eyes, lips, a hair curl and jewelry to strengthen feeling of glamorous glitter. At the end I used a hard eraser to lighten small highlights and to create jewelry shimmer.

That's all, folks!

The book I recommend for learning how to draw with pen and ink

P.S. Here are other posts dedicated to my portraiture art:

Personalized pin-up portrait
Custom, personalized greeting card with a portrait
Black and white female portraits
Color female portraits
Caricatures in cross-hatching
Post about my free portraits
Man and his pet portrait (cross-hatching)
Drawing a family portrait
Cylia