The Elf Princess (Portrait)

There was a guy from Italy who recently commissioned me the most unique and original portrait I had ever done during my entire artist career. He wanted to make a gift portrait for his wife and I was supposed to draw his wife as an elf princess with those cute pointed ears, a stylish crown and jewelry and a fairy look of this semi-divine mythological being.

It was a pen & ink portrait which I drew with cross-hatching using a regular photograph of the woman as a reference. I was especially pleased to draw this portrait as the Italian guy’s wife was from Ukraine (my Motherland). Ukrainian women are known all over the world for their beauty and I personally consider them as the most beautiful women in the world. I hope that my portrait will be a good gift for my compatriot and it will make her feel like a real princess of the fairy world of elves.

The elf princess portrait from a regular photo (pic + video)

Watch this video on Youtube

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Family portrait with a dragon (inspired by fantasy art)
Drawing an ink portrait from a picture

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Drawing a Portrait from an Old Photograph

Another project commissioned by Andrew Hennigan was a portrait drawn from an old photograph. I was supposed to draw a pen and ink portrait from a small full-length photograph of one of Andrew’s great grandfathers who was born in 1879. The picture itself was taken in about 1900. The man on the photograph was an enthusiastic amateur photographer and I believe that is why this photograph had the best quality among other pictures of Andrew’s great grandfathers. Andrew has a dream of having good portraits of all his great grandparents one day as their vintage photographs are either too small or of bad quality to look good hanging on the wall. I hope that I will be able to help Andrew bring his dream to life when he finds usable photos of his ancestors whose portraits he would like to have. And I appreciate allowing me to show the original photograph, the final portrait and the drawing video in my blog.

Giving a new life to an old photograph

Watch this video on Youtube

Related posts:
Drawing an Ink Portrait from a Picture
Drawing a Family Portrait

Portrait of grandmother with Chevrolet Bel Air

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Drawing an Ink Portrait from a Picture

Today I would like to tell you about my recent portrait assignment. It was another portrait-from-photo commission. The portrait was created for a Communication Consultant Andrew Hennigan, based in Aix en Provence, France, and Stockholm, Sweden. The man teaches people how to communicate properly and professionally. Not many people know that good communication skills are in fact the core of a success almost in any sphere of today’s life beginning from an individual’s private life to big companies’ popularity and recognition in their market niche. Decent communication skills are far from being something people are born with. Actually, I believe there are more people who constantly face annoying and life-ruining problems while communicating with other people than those who are able to speak clearly, convincingly and eloquently. A lot of people cannot verbalize their thoughts, some have fear of public speaking, and others do not like how their voices sound or they are self-conscious about their appearance. Therefore if you experience these or similar problems and want to overcome those difficulties or you just want improvements in your communication abilities, I believe Andrew Hennigan is the man who can be of assistance, especially after I noticed how good he is in expressing his thoughts in multiple languages.

But let’s get back to the portrait. As usually it was an ink portrait drawn using cross-hatching technique on an A4 paper sheet. You are welcome to watch the video below to see the whole drawing process, although I had to speed up the video in order to upload it on Youtube. Andrew was very kind to allow showing the portrait and his photograph I had used as a reference. And I hope he will love the original I sent him and will find a proper usage of the high resolution digital copy of the portrait. Thanks for hiring me, Andrew!

Pen and Ink Portrait Drawn from a Photograph (pic + video)

Watch this video on Youtube

Related posts:
Drawing a Family Portrait
The Elf Princess

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Portraiture: Female Portraits Part 1

Well, here we go. I will start with portraits. My favorite technique is cross-hatching though I can create portraits in other styles. My strong point is female portraits which you will see in this blog. And I have a lot of orders to create beautiful custom portraits from clients’ photos. Please, feel free to contact me if you need one.

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Female fashion illustrations and sketches
Cylia

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