Pen & Ink Practice Portrait #1

Practice portrait #1 drawn in fineliner on plain copier paper.

Something that I really need to work on is drawing portraits.

I’d much rather be drawing trees or flowers but I can’t expect to improve in drawing people if I don’t draw more people! 😅

In the process of trying to improve my portrait skills, I’ve researched various ways to tackle drawing the human head, ranging from basic blocking-in skills (where you draw a vague large shape and refine from there) to more technically precise methods such as the O’Reilly method. When I get the time, I’m going to be giving the Loomis method a good try as that one makes the most sense to me.

For now, this was drawn by roughing out the larger positive and negative forms and working down to the detail. I think the finished sketch clearly demonstrates that I need the Loomis method! 😀

Drawing materials

For this one I decided to try something different – working using a very narrow fineliner and minimal lines (i.e. more white paper).

This was drawn using a 0.05mm Sakura fineliner on plain copier paper.