3/4 view portrait tutorial

If you have been practicing my first portrait tutorial for drawing a perfectly proportioned human face viewed from the front, and the second tutorial for drawing the portrait in profile, you are now ready for an even bigger challenge; drawing a portrait from the 3/4 view. It will be helpful to have a photograph to look at for this exercise.

Grab some pieces of paper (the larger the better, because it’s always easier to draw bigger rather than smaller), a light colored pencil (I like light blue), and one graphite pencil, get a board, easel, or other angled drawing surface. It’s never a good idea to sit at a table with your paper flat on the table in front of you. Your eyes will see a distorted perspective while drawing and when you pick up your paper to take a good look at it everything will be elongated.

1. Draw a light blue circle a little higher from the center of your paper.
   
2. At an angle, draw a U to make an overall acorn shape.
   
3. Similar rules apply to the 3/4 view as the profile view, like breaking up your rectangle in half horizontally.
   
4. But, it will be easier to think of this one as a 3D box instead of a rectangle, to plan our features out on.
   
5. We have to remember that the face is turned and draw a curved line in the center of our “rectangle”.
   
6. And now, instead of breaking the rectangle in half vertically, we have to draw a curved line to show the middle of the face.
   
7. Under the horizontal curved line, we need another curved line. This will hold the eyes.
   
8. An ear length down from our first horizontal curve, we draw another curved line to hold the bottom of the nose.
   
9. From that last line, we draw a smaller curved horizontal line a bit further down.
   
10. Now that the layout for our face is done, we draw in a U shape for the neck and the shoulders. Look at your photo to see where these fall exactly.
    
11. Starting with the nose, draw it so that the middle of the nose and septum fall on our vertical curved line, and the bottom of the nose hits the line that holds the bottom of the ear.
    
12. The eyes fall on the curved line above the nose line, and the corner of the eyes hit the nostrils, as you now know from the other tutorial.
    
13. The lips fall directly above and bellow the last horizontal curve line, and the corners of the mouth end in the middle of the pupils, like they did in the other tutorials.
    
14. The eyebrows fall on the line that holds the top of the ear, above the eyes.
    
15. Paying attention to your photo, draw the face, ear, and head shape outline.
    
16. We are done with our guidelines, and can now draw in the hair.
    
17. I added some quick shading to define the shape of the face, neck, and shoulders.
    

The 3/4 view portrait is one of the most interesting, but it does take a lot more practice and observation of you model. Stay tuned for the details of drawing each of the features, and remember to keep practicing!





Related posts:

1. new portrait rosie
2. how to draw noses
3. how to draw eyes
4. profile drawing tutorial
5. portrait drawing tutorial
6. always changing my look
7. finished portrait water girl
8. working portrait, water girl



This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 6:30 am and is filed under art & design tutorials.