Portrait of Richard

This is a portrait I did for a senior who attends St. Henry High School in Kentucky. He has cancer and is going through chemo and such. A guy I work with is his baseball coach and I offered to do this portrait for Richard and his family.

The portrait was done on Strathmore Bristol Vellum(heavy weight) and is 11x14. The pencils I used were Derwent Graphic pencils. I used different hardnesses for my shading which were 4H, H, B, and 5B. Now lets get into those images!


As with all of portraits I get a detailed line drawing. I usually do this on my sketch book because I tend to erase a lot from being a perfectionist. After I get a line drawing I want, I then trace my drawing and apply it to the board or vellum I am using for the final. This way my erasing won't mess up the surface. I use measurement that were taught to me. The distant between the eyes are an eye's length, the distance from one eye to the other equals 3 eyes. The distance from the middle of the eyes to the bottom of the nose is roughly an eye and a half. The width of the nose on both ends usually extends to the inside corners of the eyes. A book I recently bought goes into GREAT detail about this... "Dynamic Anatomy" by Hogarth.

I then detail the eyes to the tones I want.


Next I layout the shaded areas lightly with a H pencil. Usually I'll start with the eyes, to the nose, then to the mouth.


Here I begin to darken the shadows with the H pencil and use the B pencil for the darker spots. I'll also lightly shade in other shadowed areas around the face and hair. And use my 5B pencil for more detailed eye brows. Getting these darker areas like the pupils, eye brows, etc will help with the other shadows in the face.


At this stage I put more detail in the mouth and teeth, also in the hair as well. This helps the portrait look more complete. I can then darken the shadow on the right side of the face to a shade that pleases me. I'll use the 5B pencil in the darkest shadows, but not to heavy.


Now I do some more detail shadows where the hat is over the face. I also put detail into the neck and ears.


At this step I complete the hat. This really makes the portrait pop out. I used a 5B pencil on the whole hat... I was trying to match the tone of the red color.


At this stage I have finished the shirt. I used a 4H pencil in the shirt and 5B on the under shirt, as it's the same color red as the hat. I also take the 4H pencil to finish up some of the shadows into the really bright areas of the face. This cleans up the shadows and causes them to be more smooth in transitions. Next is some final touches.


Here is the completed portrait. The upper left corner is a little logo the baseball team wears on their shirts to honor Richard. The bottom right corner is a little quick shading of a clip art image of Babe Ruth. My plan on this was to put three stripes at the bottom... the top and bottom using the 5B pencil and the middle using the H pencil. Then I was going to use Illustrator to print out "St. Henry Crusaders" to place at the far right of the portrait, centered with the stripes... but after realizing how much work and how it would probably turn out messy... I decided not to do it.

And here is a close up of the portrait for giggles.


Hope you enjoyed!