It can be very difficult drawing a portrait from a photograph as the photograph needs to be very detailed with a good resolution, however it is still perfectly possible to draw a portrait from a photograph. As in our other tutorials I start off with an oval shape for the head, look at the head and try not to see any other features only the outline of the head shape is what we need here.
 

If you are drawing from a live model hold the pencil vertically with your arm fully stretched out and try to capture the axis of the head which is through the brow of the nose (Between the eyes) through the bulbous end of the nose, through the centre of the lips and middle part of the chin and draw a line in here. If you are drawing from the photo above hold the pencil vertically onto the photograph to find this angle, this is the central axis of the head from which we can draw the portrait.
 

Holding the pencil at arms length and horizontally this time to try to and find the angle of the eyes, hold the pencil across both centre corners of the eyes and draw a line in for this angle. Continuing to hold the pencil vertically to see how far off the angle of the nose is from the vertical and draw this in and then draw a little horizontal line for the end of the nose. Using the same technique as above try to capture the angle of the mouth by keeping the pencil held horizontally at both corners.
 

Now for the bony orbital shapes of the eye sockets and starting from the top of the eyebrow and moving your pencil around to above the cheek, draw in these oval shapes. Draw in one small oval for the end of the nose and one for the mouth, why ovals you might say? well if you look closely at the shapes of the eyes, nose and mouth you will see that these features fit nicely into this sort of shape and these are only rough guidelines to indicate where these features are to go.
 

Starting to put in shade now for the left eye and down the left side of the face and the right eyebrow with a dark 4b pencil, I draw in the lens of the eye leaving a bit of white paper for the highlight. We now roughly indicate the right ear making sure that the position is correct by holding our pencil horizontally and measuring from the top of the eyebrow to see where the top of the ear comes to and then carrying on holding the pencil horizontally at the bottom of the nose to see where the bottom of the ear comes.
 

More shape and shade has been added to the left side of the hair and shadow from the nose across the left cheek has been drawn in. The lips and the bottom of the nose now are starting to look a bit more definite with more shading put in. A bit of shading down the left shoulder has been drawn in to indicate shadow from the head which makes the head come forward more.

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