Portrait step by step

Recently a friend of mine saw a picture of my daughter that I had drawn. He asked me to do some drawings of his grandchildren in the same style for a family history book he is working on. I've mentioned before that I'm not exactly a portrait artist (though thats what everyone always wants) but I decided to oblige my friend, since he asked so nicely.

He sent me a photo of two of these grandkids and told me to pick one and draw it, so he could see how they were going to turn out. (I'm not posting the photo because, well, they aren't my kids to post!)

For this project I'm using scrapbooking cardstock paper (I've decided most art papers have too much tooth for this technique, and this is just as archival), Prismacolor pencils, and one or two regular Crayola colored pencils to do the basic drawing (because they sharpen better and are easier to erase!) Colored paper is great for portraits or other colored pencil pieces, because the paper that shows through the drawing compliments the picture rather than glaring white and begging to be covered up.

First, I did a sketch of this guy (it scanned in lighter than it is) :



As I've told you, babies are hard for me to draw, and I didn't like the way this looked. So I took a stab at drawing his sister instead, on the back of the same page:



But I didn't like that one either. SO I went back to the first drawing, moved the eye on the right, and got to work! First, I always finish the eyes. I probably shouldn't because they usually have something that needs fixed, but oh well. Then I put in a few values in the hair and main facial shapes:




Hey, its starting to take shape! Next, I put in most of the hair, and started putting in colors around the edges of the face. I also add more blue. I find that using non-skin colors (blue, green, purple, etc) makes the picture more fun for me and more interesting to look at. The trick is not to use too much:



I decided the top of his head was shaped weird, so I fixed that, then added a background color. This helps so the pink paper color looks like part of the face, rather than just the paper. It adds nice contrast too. (I darkened this scan so you could see the colors better, its not really this pink!) I also started drawing in his blue vest:




At this point I felt the colors in the face were getting too 'cool' with the pinks and blues so I added some yellows and browns. You can see it mostly in the forehead. I also put some warmer colors in the blue of his clothes, so that it looked more natural with the other colors of the portrait:


By now, it looked very similar to the photograph, but portraits aren't very dependable for color accuracy. While it was a nice professional picture, the middle of his face was washed out by the photographer's lights. At this point, one has to rely on intuition and prior knowledge to fill in the blanks. For instance, foreheads usually have more yellows and greens, the middle of the face has more reds, and the jaw has more blues. For a baby, I would use more reds than usual in the bottom of the face, and not so much blue, because it looks like beard stubble!

I added blue to the hair because it was looking too yellowish compared to the face. I also added more color to the background to create a nicer contrast. There is a little more blue everywhere, just because I like it! It adds a nice transparent look to the skin.
And...voila!:



Of course this scan doesn't capture all of the exact colors, but it doesn't look too bad! Much better than the first colored pencil portrait I did in high school. But I only had a 12 color set back then: