Portrait Drawing & Likeness

This workbook turns the Portrait Drawing & Likeness course into hands-on reps. Each section pairs with a course module and mixes guided exercises, fill-in worksheets, and checklists so you build a structure-first portrait practice. Work through it with pencils and a mirror nearby, not just a pen - the value is in the measured drawings you make and the proportion notes you write down. Keep a small sketchbook beside this workbook and date every page so you can watch your likeness improve over weeks.

Assemble a focused kit and prove to yourself that a head is a constructed solid, not a flat outline of features.

Without any reference, draw ten Loomis heads: a cranial ball, sliced temple planes, a curving center line and eyeline, and an attached jaw. Turn each head a little differently - front, slight turn, three-quarter, looking up, looking down. The goal is to make the construction automatic so your attention is free later. Keep all lines light.

Choose a clear photo of a face and turn both the photo and your paper upside down. Draw the face purely as shapes and shadows without thinking 'eye' or 'nose'. Turn it right-side up only at the end. Notice how much more accurate the proportions are when your brain stops 'reading a face'.

Fill in the materials you own or plan to buy, using the course's focused graphite, charcoal, paper, and eraser guidance. Total your spend before purchasing, and prioritize a sharpener that gives a long point and the core four graphite grades.

Drill the average proportion map until placement is automatic in front, three-quarter, and profile views.

Draw five blank average front-view heads using only the canon from memory: eyes halfway down the head, the Leonardo thirds (hairline-brow-nose-chin), and the fifths across (five eye-widths wide, one eye-width gap, nose within the inner-eye spacing, mouth corners under the irises). No specific person - just the map. Check each with a mirror.

Construct the same head in five rotations: full front, slight three-quarter, strong three-quarter, near profile, and full profile. Curve the center line and horizontal guides for each, compress the far side, and make the far eye narrower than the near eye. This builds the foreshortening instinct beginners lack.

Pick one photo reference. For each landmark, write the average-canon value, then what this specific face actually does, then the difference. This worksheet trains you to see individuality as deviation from the average, which is where likeness lives.

Render each feature as a 3D form described by shadow, and model the head with a full controlled value range.

Fill a sketchbook page with isolated feature studies from reference: at least three eyes (built as a ball in a socket, lids wrapping over it), two noses (planes and shadow, no outline), two mouths (soft form over the dental cylinder, only the seam dark), and two ears. Describe each with value, not contour lines.

Choose a strongly lit portrait photo. Squint until the face collapses into just light and shadow, then fill every shadow shape with one flat mid-dark tone, leaving the lights as clean paper. Stop there. Observe how the head already reads as solid and 3D with only two values and no detail.

Draw a value scale of five to nine steps from clean paper-white to your darkest 8B or compressed-charcoal black. Then plan the light for a portrait: one direction, and where each shadow element falls. Keep this beside you as you render so you push the full range instead of staying gray.

Pin a specific person's likeness through proportion and angle, then complete finished graphite, charcoal, and ink portraits.

Pick a well-known or familiar face. Using only simple lines and the unique proportions and angles - eye spacing, midface length, jaw width, the tilt of the eyes and mouth - try to make the person recognizable before adding any rendering or detail. Show it to someone and ask who it is.

Draw the same portrait reference three times: once in graphite (patient layered build to full range), once in charcoal (block big with vine, tone and lift lights, commit darks late), and once in pen-and-ink (translate every value into hatching, cross-hatching, and contour hatching). Compare how each medium changes the feel.

When a portrait does not look like the person, use this to find the cause before re-rendering. Likeness errors are almost always proportion or angle, not detail. Compare your drawing to the reference side by side and flipped in a mirror.