Realistic Pencil Portrait Mastery

Today I’ll be reviewing Christopher Sia’s “Realistic Pencil Portrait Mastery”, a home-study course that will teach you how to draw realistic portraits.  Now let me begin by saying that I care very little for so-called “pitch sites,” the online version of OxyClean infomercials.  They all have the same structure: 1) Hey check out how great my product is; 2) see how great these people think my product is; and 3) but wait, there’s more!

Well, this online course is sold through just such a pitch site, but Mr. Sia got in touch with me so I figured I’ll give it a try.  At this point let me also provide full disclosure: if you access his site through any of the links I provide on this page and ultimately end up purchasing his product, I will earn a commission on that sale – money that will be reinvested in keeping the lights on around here.  Nonetheless, I will try to do as objective a review as I can.

So let’s get started.

All sales pitch aside, what product do you get for your $47.00?

• 5 e-books lessons and 5 process maps (more on that below)
  1. How To Draw A Realistic Eye
  2. How To Draw A Realistic Nose
  3. How To Draw Realistic Mouth And Teeth
  4. How To Draw A Realistic Ear
  5. How To Draw Realistic Hair
• 100 high-resolution reference pictures (70 head shots, 30 facial feature close-ups)
• 12 weeks of exercises

Ok, so let’s a look at what we’re getting.

The Lessons

As the author states, the lesson contain 208 pages and a total of 605 illustrations.  The basic technique used is that you start with a picture, draw a light outline of the feature, and then shade it in.  He goes into painstaking detail on all the required shading.

How to Draw a Realistic Mouth

Following his instructions will definitely make you see things you might’ve otherwise not caught.  There are good little tips dispersed throughout.  Here’s a bit on drawing hair and eyes:

How to Draw Hair

How to Draw Eyes

The Process Maps

Each lesson comes along with a process map, which is essentially a diagram on how to go about attacking the particular feature that you are looking to draw.

Process Map for the Eye

The High-Rez Photographs

Included in the package are 70 high-resolution images in black and white (resolutions are in the area of 1500px by 2000px).  These are definitely helpful as they provide you good reference material, although they are all celebrities – subject matter I always find slightly tacky.  In addition to the celebrities there are 30 images of facial features, which are great for you to get a sense of how individual features vary from person to person.

Liam Neeson

Female Mouth

The Exercies

The 12 weeks of exercises are a bit light on the exercises per say, but contain some additional good information on various shading techniques.

How to Draw Eyebrows

But wait, there’s more

Once you’ve purchased the course, you can upgrade to the VIP level for another $29.95, which will give you access to another 30 high-rez black and white celebrity pictures as well as a worthwhile guide on how to make sure your drawing doesn’t lack contrast but shows more volume.

David Beckham

In addition, you can send in your reference picture and Mr. Sia will make sure that it is properly edited for you to draw from.

My Thoughts: The Bad

There are several things that I miss from this package, the most important being a lesson on how to pull it all together into a coherent face.  There is no theoretical background on some basic things like proportion of the head or face.  Moreover, each lesson focuses on only a single facial part, instead of varied facial parts to illustrate some facial differences.

If you want to be able to draw from your mind, this course is not for you – it is strictly useful in drawing from a given photograph.  The course also requires some basic skills in being able to trace the contours and features that you’re later going to shade in.

The Good

Mr. Shia is very detailed and you can fully follow along his entire drawing process.  If you want to see each step in how his drawings are put down, you’ll find them.  There are many good tips and tricks on shading and pulling off tricky bits like hair.  The process maps give you a birds-eye view of the drawing process and the exercises have some additional beneficial information.

The reference material will keep you busy for months if you don’t mind drawing celebrities.  The facial features pics give you sense of the variation of facial features.  The photographs are very large and very crisp – great to draw in other words.

Conclusion

If you have been drawing largely from photographs and want to elevate your game to the next level, this is certainly a purchase you may want to consider.  If you are looking to be able to draw the human head and face in 3 dimensions from your mind, look elsewhere.

Hopefully this review has been beneficial to you, and thanks to Mr. Sia for letting me review the product.

Good luck and happy drawing! – Lee

Related posts:

1. Self Portrait (No. 23 / B5 Series) and Others by Matt W. Moore
2. Self Portrait Sketch and More by Shawn Barber
3. “The Drawing Is the Most Important Part” – Interview with Matt K. Smith

"Geist" by Matt K. Smith

In our ongoing series of artist interviews, I was able to catch up with Matt Smith, illustrator and artist in San Diego, California.  Matt has some great figure drawing work displayed on his sites that form the basis for his superb illustrations, often of the fantasy or horror genre.

Thanks to Matt for agreeing to participate.

What’s your name?

Matt Smith

Where did you grow up?

Endwell, NY

Where do you live now?

San Diego, CA

How old are you?

30

What is your educational background? What, if anything, did you study?

I got a degree in Illustration, but I am where I am today because of Watts Atelier, a traditional figure drawing and painting school in Encinitas, CA, and all the hard work I have put into it. I still take classes there, as good as my drawings are, I still have lots to learn.

"Untitled (Female Head)" by Matt K. Smith

How do you make a living?

I create fantasy and horror illustrations for different companies.

What does “art” mean to you?

This is kind of a hard question since the word art and artist now applies to so many things these days. I am not the deep “artsy” type of person exactly. For me I guess I use art to create things, but not “abstract”, bizarre stuff, but tangible and understandable. Anyone can look at my work and understand it, it’s a monster, a person, its a skull, etc, just trying to take these things and make an interesting story. As well as all the figure drawings and paintings that I have done, they are not in depth pieces of art, just practice and training so I can get good and keep getting better, nothing more or nothing less. I hope that answered the question.

How long have you been making art, and what role does that play in your life?

I have been drawing since I can remember. I used to draw all my favorite video game and cartoon characters, such as Super Mario, Godzilla, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mega Man, the list goes on.

"Godzilla Sketch" by Matt K. Smith

What role does drawing play in your work? Is it a means to an end, or an end in and of itself?

Drawing and learning how to draw is very important in my work. When it comes to creating a finished piece, the drawing is the most important part. Flashy rendering and awesome paint strokes can never save a piece if the foundational drawing is lacking.

Are there any people that influenced you that stand out? What current artists do you follow?

Besides my teachers at Watts Atelier (Jeff Watts, Erik Gist, Meadow Gist, Lucas Graciano, Ben Young, and Stan Prokopenko) I have many artists that influence my work. Here is a short list of people whose work I enjoy looking at: Zhoaming Wu, Joseph Clement Coll, Frank Frazetta, Phil Hale, James Gurney, Steve Huston, John Asaro, Glen Orbik, Richard Schmid, and many many more.

What would you consider your “style” of art to be, if you have one?

I guess I would say that I have several “styles” (though I don’t really like that word) depending on the client I am working with, but mostly I consider myself a traditional illustrator and figurative artist.

"Untitled (Sitting Woman)" by Matt K. Smith

What’s your weapon of choice? What medium and drawing tool do you prefer to use?

I mostly use pencils, pens, conte charcoal pencils, and oil paint. I am also a good digital painter, but I don’t use it so much now, I prefer getting a real painting as opposed to something that doesn’t really exist.

What approach do you take for your work? Do you plan it out or does it emerge spontaneously? How long do you usually work on a piece?

When I create an illustration for a client everything is planned out, starting with small thumbnail sketches, to a finished drawing and then to the painting. When I draw or paint from life, it is planned out as well, but much more spontaneous due to the fact I only have a few hours to create an image.

What are you currently working on?

Creating designer T Shirt illustrations for Remetee. I get to draw a lot of skulls which is fun! And also working on some personal projects.

"Grunt" by Matt K. Smith

What would you tell aspiring artists?

Do lots of research before you pick out a school to go to. If you want to do figurative types of work like I do, I would suggest not going to college and go to a traditional figure drawing school like Watts Atelier. Check out the Art Renewal Center for schools. Also try to always keep a positive attitude, a negative attitude only gets in the way. Anyone can get as good as me and better, you just got to find the right place to learn and work real hard.

Anything you would like share and let us know?

There is another Matt Smith artist out there. He is an awesome plein air painter, I wish I could paint half as good as he can. Just letting you know I am not that Matt Smith!

"Untitled (Asian Male Head)" by Matt K. Smith

Related posts:

1. Matt Cassan: Charcoal Art and Interview
2. Interview with Jonathan Bergeron aka Johnny Crap
3. “Making work makes me want to make more work” – Interview with Henry St.Leger (aka Sainty WHAT)

Drawing faces or portaits is, to me, a bit of a paradox.  It is that part of our body which most distinguishes us from others (as an identifying physical trait), but that part of the body which we see the least during our lives.  When we do, we do not see our face as others, but rather the mirror reflection, the opposite. It is the seat of the outward manifestation of our inner emotional lives, and yet also draws emotional responses from the outside.  Faces can take on an almost infinite of shapes that express the many subtle variations of our inner being, and thus present a unique challenge in rendering on paper.

Thus, practice, as ever, is of the essence, especially when you want to draw faces.  I have collected here some materials that should aid you in your quest of drawing the face just right.  Hopefully they are of help, and as always, any comments or feedback is much appreciated.

How-To’s, Tutorials, and Step-By-Steps

As you’re learning to draw faces, the first thing to get a grasp of is facial proportions.  Our faces are a beautiful harmony of various proportions, deviations from which our eyes easily detect even if only on a subconscious level.  Here are a handful of resources to get you going on facial proportions.

Short tutorial on the proper proportions of the face on tipdeck.com.

Step-by-step instructions on how to draw a face on wikiHow

Step-by-step face drawing tutorial by Stephanie Valentin

Several portrait tutorials on artyfactory.com

Quick portrait drawing tutorial, by Tina Poe.

Good tutorial on how to shade a face, by Brian Duey

Books

Please be aware that any book on this site is linking to Amazon, of which I am an affiliate.  That means that when you make a purchase on Amazon using one of my links, Amazon reimburses me a small percentage (at no cost to you!).  This greatly helps me maintain this site and provide content.  Your support is great appreciated!

“The Artist’s Complete Guide to Drawing the Head” by William Maughan

This book is a bit more advanced and has received great reviews on Amazon, although it’s primarily focused on drawing the three-quarter portrait pose.

“How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs” by Lee Hammond

As the name implies, if you are interested in drawing lifelike portraits based on photographs, this is the way to go. Lee Hammond is a great instructor and you’ll learn all about pencil technique along the way.

“How to Draw Faces” by Barbara Soloff Levy

You can’t really go wrong with starting with a book on how to draw faces. Beware, however, that this a book targeted at children.

Facial Expressions

Once you have a good, firm grasp on drawing proper facial proportions and such, it’s time to broaden your scope and tackle the thousands of expressions that we humans use to communicate with one another.  Here are a few resources to get you going.

Explore facial anatomy and expressions interactively, by Victoria Flores.

Tool to create expressions based on emotions.

Guide to 50 facial expressions, by Dani Jones.

“The Artist’s Complete Guide to Facial Expression” by Gary Faigin

“Facial Expressions” by Mark Simon

Videos

It’s always good to see how other people work – you can learn a lot just by watching. So below I’ve compiled some videos that do a fairly decent job of explaining how to draw faces.

Online Books

Sometimes to really dive into a topic you just need to get a book – a website isn’t gonna cut it. If you really wanted to get going on drawing faces and cannot wait to order a book, here are some online books that you can read.

Just for Fun

Finally for the doodler in all of us – how to draw faces the doodle way:

Related posts:

1. 7 Tutorials on How to Draw the Human Anatomy / Body / Figure
2. How to Draw Hands: 35 Tutorials, How-To’s, Step-by-Steps, Videos, Studies, Poses and Photo References
3. How to Draw Eyes: 25 Tutorials, Step-by-Steps, How-To’s and Reference Photos on How to Draw Human Eyes

Untitled (Zombie Head) by Scott Move

Jim Phillips on acid – that’s kind of what the art of Scott Move reminds me of, and why I was so excited when he got in touch with me.  The interwoven imagery looks almost like the T-2000 burning in the molten steel at the end of Terminator 2;  the clear black lines have a visceral and uncompromising feel to them.  Can’t wait to see more of these kind of drawings.

Scott graciously agreed to fill out the Drawn in Black Artist Interview, so here’s what he had to say:

DiB: Where did you grow up? and where do you live now?

Scott: Essex in the south east of the U.K.

How old are you?

Never ask an artist his age! I’m 33.

What is your educational background? What, if anything, did you study?

I studied art at school and college until I realised it was a bit of a huge waste of time for me. I learned all the basics from my mum and the rest was all guess work and a series of mistakes.  I don’t want to draw apples thanks.

How do you make a living?

Unfortunately I have to work a full day every day in construction. Theres no way I can make enough money from artwork to pay my rent and increasing phone bills. I dislike the work i do immensely, but can’t survive without it. Hopefully I can one day start to make a living creatively but until then, its a double life for me….

What does “art” mean to you?

I really have no idea. Some kind of expression of feeling or emotion. Whats the correct answer to that?

Trauma by Scott Move

How long have you been making art, and what role does that play in your life?

I’ve been making art for years, with the encouragement form my mum to do something creative every day, no matter what. I still try and do that. It plays a huge part in my life now as I spend nearly all my spare time drawing stuff (and then re-drawing it) – either for myself or for some kind of commision. I tend to feel like I’m wasting my time if I’m not drawing, I get a bit irritable.

What role does drawing play in your work?  Is it a means to an end, or an end in and of itself?

Well, as far as my artwork, its all I really do, so its the begining and the end. I dont have the patience or the skills to use computer programmes so its all hand drawn or nothing at all. Very time consuming but i like it that way.

Are there any people that influenced you that stand out? What current artists do you follow?

There are hundreds of artists that are influential, far too many to mention. I think anyone who does what they do from the heart is pretty much doing it for the right reasons. Theres some truly incredible artwork out there from all eras, its all an influence at some point. Nothing is original.

***

Thanks to Scott for taking the time to answer these questions and sharing his artwork.  You can find Scott online at his blog I SAW NOTHING, on MySpace, Twitter, or Fecal Face.

Everything is Under Control by Scott Move

Untitled (Filled With Hate Flyer) by Scott Move

Yoink by Scott Move

Related posts:

1. “Kristoff” by Richard T. Scott
2. “The Drawing Is the Most Important Part” – Interview with Matt K. Smith
3. "Barn Interior" by Scott Tulay

Back in Black T-Shirt by Godmachine

Aziz a.k.a. Godmachine is an illustrator based out of Wales, UK, with some seriously nasty skills. Growing up and working as an electrician and bricklayer as a young lad, it was skateboard graphics through which he rekindled his connection to art.  Influenced by artists such as Horsebites, Gieger, Aubrey Beardlsy, Klimt, and Richard James, it is probably fair to say that he does a bit of influencing himself these days.  As a freelance artist Godmachine’s art graces skateboards and band merchandise such as t-shirts, album covers and posters. Even though he considers himself old-school, he does most of his sketching straight on the computer these days.

I think t-shirt illustrations such as the one show above are a great example his work and what I personally like: gory, detailed illustrations.  His work in general is quite dark, and this is the essence of his appeal I think – at least for a certain type of audience.

If you haven’t done so already, check out Godmachine’s website or blog and put some food on his table by buying his stuff from his store.  There are also a number of interview with Godmachine if you want a deeper look at who he is:

Interview with Godmachine on Abduzeedo

Interview with Godmachine on We are the Zombie Nation

Interview with Godmachine on Creep Machine

Interview with Godmachine by Rockett

Sonisphere Poster by Godmachine

Untitled Sketch by Godmachine

Untitled Sketch by Godmachine

Untitled Sketch by Godmachine

Related posts:

1. “The Drawing Is the Most Important Part” – Interview with Matt K. Smith
2. Untitled (Neck in Straight Jacket) and Others by Hamid Bahrami
3. Drawings by Wonman Kim

Nani by Yury Kushevsky

Yesterday my girlfriend asked me what “Stradivarius” means; although I’d heard the word, I really didn’t know. In two clicks of a Google search later, I found the following definition on Wikipedia:

A Stradivarius is a stringed instrument built by members of the Stradivari family, particularly Antonio Stradivari. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or reproduce, though this belief is controversial. The name “Stradivarius” has also become a superlative applied to designate excellence. To be called “the Stradivari” of any field is to be deemed the finest there is.

What does this have to do with Yury Kushevsky?  Well, I would venture to say that his work will be “the Stradivari” of drawings, if it isn’t already.  Yury is currently a student at the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in the Mytischi district of Moscow, and apparently they’re feeding their students the right food.

Nani is a superb example of Yury’s skill.  Although just a “simple” portrait, it somehow speaks volumes to me.  Is that a tear running down her cheek? Nani looks like a woman who’s had her share of burden in life.

Although Yury unfortunately doesn’t have his own portfolio, you can find quite a bit of his work at ArtNow, a Russian art gallery site, as well as over on NoBullArt.  I for one am interested to see what this great Russian artist produces in the future.

Related posts:

1. Untitled by Antonia Franck
2. Matt Cassan: Charcoal Art and Interview
3. “The Drawing Is the Most Important Part” – Interview with Matt K. Smith

Joan by Anna Shipstone

Anna Shipstone hails from the small seaside town of Cromer, Norfolk, UK, where she lives with her pet dog and family.  On her website you can find some of the truly gorgeous sample work of this pencil portraiture artist – in particular I enjoy her children portraits and the one pictured above.  Joan seems to be almost three dimensional and pops out of the page.  While you’re there, also check out her abstract color work – trippy!

Related posts:

1. “The Drawing Is the Most Important Part” – Interview with Matt K. Smith
2. "Most Wretched Mess" and Others by Skinner
3. Self Portrait (No. 23 / B5 Series) and Others by Matt W. Moore

The characters developed by veteran concept artist and character designer Mike May are anything but ordinary – each inhabits a unique world, suggested not so much by the environment they’re rendered in but by the dress, demeanor, and look of the characters themselves.  Mike is a also a superb caricaturist.  There’re a ton of drawings and illustrations on his portfolio site and additional, more recent, work on his blog, so if you need some inspiration, go check it out.

Related posts:

1. “The Gatekeeper” by Mike Sibley
2. "Punks" by Mike Giant
3. Untitled (Nazi Daemon) by Hethe Srodawa

If you have a fragile self-image, don’t ask Sean Gardner to draw a caricature of you – his no holds barred style might dent that pretty ego of yours.  Seriously, he captures the essence of a person’s face and persona to the tee while injecting his own undeniably hard-hitting style.  Check out his website where you’ll fine a ton of caricatures, tutorials, and tips and tricks of the trade.  You can send him pictures of yourself to be drawn (for a modest $30) and even request to be drawn like a zombie – now how cool is that?

No related posts.

Although Illustrator Mathis Rekowski has some wonderfully trippy drawings like the one featured here, he’s got even more illustrations seem to me at once retro and cutting edge. Certainly someone to watch out for. You can purchase the image above at Mathis’ new store, or follow him on his blog

Related posts:

1. Self Portrait (No. 23 / B5 Series) and Others by Matt W. Moore
2. "Most Wretched Mess" and Others by Skinner
3. “The Drawing Is the Most Important Part” – Interview with Matt K. Smith