This portrait is no different than the other ones I've completed in the fact that I wanted an interesting subject to sketch.

I was approached by one of my co workers that had a photo he wanted sketched as a present for his parents. The photo was obviously a very old one but the detail was very good. There were a few tears in the picture on the left side, but nothing I couldn't fix in my computer using "Gimp."

Once I had the photo repaired I carefully drew the outline. Once the outline was acceptable I began shading my drawing in sections.

Depending one whether or not you are a lefty or a righty determines which side to start with.

I'm right handed, in fact I don't think I could draw a stick figure with my left hand! Since I am right handed I choose to start on the left side of my drawing. I do that because I use a darker lead pencil in the mechanical form and it will smudge as I lay my hand down on it. So starting on the left side helps me to keep the smudging to a minimal amount.

Once I get some of the hair finished on the left side I like to begin somewhere on the face, usually the eyes a good place to start.

Once I get most of the left side of the face complete I choose to move down to the shirt area. This picture has a great deal of detail. There was some really cool things going on around the collar area. I had to be careful here and not get confused. I used my left finger to point on the reference photo where I was at. That way I didn't draw the loop I was looking at in the wrong place. This took some time for sure. Once I was happy with the color on the left side I began working on the pearl necklace. The necklace was also tricky, because it appears to be smaller on the far left side of the drawing as compared to the middle of the neck. This is due to "perspective."

Once I had some progress on the collar and necklace, I moved down to the arm area. There are some wrinkles in the dress that show up on the reference photo. So I wanted them to be very similar. I quickly marked out the shadow areas and they were the first areas to focus on.

After I finish with most of the left side, it's time to move to the right side of the drawing. I chose to go back to the top and begin working on the face. This is where it gets exciting and it begins to really look like the person, well hopefully!

For some reason my scanner decided to leave out a lot of the detail of this drawing. But you get the idea, although the original drawing is much better than the scan version of it.

My overall goal is to make the portrait as close to the photo as possible. It really isn't that difficult as long as you take your time and keep comparing to the photo.

Good luck and happy sketching!

If you want a portrait of your own, email me from my website. Here's the link

www.soulreflectionsbyjeff.com