Drawing Tutorial: Minimalist Half Portraits

At first this drawing does look very daunting due to the high amount of detail applied. The key to this drawing is Proportioning. In order to start creating something similar,just find a front on picture of a face or you can just copy the one above. I would recommend copying the one above if you are fairly new to drawing. Anyway, I find it easier to start by drawing the eye, since the eye is in the middle of everything, so you can judge your proportioning from everything else. Now this eye in the drawing is fairly detailed so don't be disappointed if you aren't able to replicate it. The most important thing about drawing the eye is perfecting the pupil. Remember to start light then add shading once you are happy, and also shading is about layering and not just darkening lines.

Once you are happy with your eye, to get the same minimalist effect you must pay very close attention to lighting and shading. Since you have your eye completed, you can now judge the size of the eyebrow, nose, lips, chin, and hair according to the size of your eye. In order to get this realistic as possible, you must be constantly checking your proportioning and positioning of the objects. Now you must only add the lines that are absolutely needed in order to define what you are drawing. So for the nose for example, you only need to add the shadows made from the opposite side of the nose and the nostrils. Those elements alone are enough to distinguish that it is a nose.

The hair however is a bit more complicated due to the complexity of the curves. In order to create natural looking hair is to look at the most distinguishing parts of the hair that make up that style. So for instance the curves in her hair are very distinct. Once you make a light outline of the movement of her hair, you want to start layering in order add depth. It's important to capture how the light hits her hair since that is why her hair appears natural.

Feel free to post results in the comment section, have fun!

Artist: Mayaselky
Picture retrieved from Half portraits can be very powerful

Artist's Comments:

Inspired by Illeana Hunt's work. This is my first successful attempt at drawing realistically  (I think) in 6 months of exploration and copying artists' work.