3 Must-Haves for a Great Portrait

Summer break is nearly here! I will be doing a few oil portraits over the summer, but I wanted to share some of my charcoal drawings and talk a bit about the process of creating a striking portrait in any medium.

1. Value

Value (how light or dark a color or tone is) is the single most important part of creating a lifelike portrait. I usually start out with a two-value statement. This means separating the image into two tones- light and dark. When using charcoal, I use vine charcoal to create an even medium tone in the dark side and leave the white of the paper as the light side. This allows you to judge shapes and creates unity within the shadow shapes. I then add my darkest darks, apply mid tones to transition from dark to light, and then add my highlights last. This method allows me to work on the entire portrait at once, rather than shading in piece by piece, and keeps me focused and on-track. I follow a similar process when painting in oils. 

2.  Contrast

Areas of high contrast draw the eye. The image at the beginning of this post has a great example of contrast. In the second portrait, the lit side of the face is nearly white and backs into the dark background. This calls attention to the light side of the face and keeps the focal point on the woman’s eyes. The part of the face closest to the viewer calls less attention because it is in shadow. I tried to use as little value variation as possible on the shadow side of the face to intentionally draw the eye to the light side. 

3. Lost and Found Edges

If you study the drawings of Sargent or any other master portrait artist, some parts recede into the background or appear fuzzy, while areas of more importance are crisper and clearer. This adds a bit of variation and keeps the drawing from looking too much like a photograph.

 

Here’s a self portrait by Edward Hopper, whose sketches I’ve been obsessing over lately. He’s got a good example of lost and found edges. The fringe of his hair dissolves into the dark side of his face, his turtleneck dissolves into the tone of his jacket, and does he even have a left eye?? In my opinion, if Hopper took the trouble to carefully define all these unnecessary details, the whimsy of this sketch would be completely lost. There’s something satisfying about the dissolving edges that make the lit side of his face all the more captivating.

I hope this has been helpful! Till next time...
Izzy