Welcome Back To Portrait Tutorial #11!

If your looking to hone your artistic ability, check out how a fellow artist works his pieces or even just appreciate looking at the process of art, you are in THE RIGHT PLACE!

Todays Subject: Lou Reed

"Take A Walk On The Wild Side"

Duration:10 hours Over 2 Days

This was a very high contrast art piece that required a lot of time shading, my suggestion to anyone attempting this is to keep this in mind when planning out size. The bigger you make it obviously may increase time dramatically.

Ever since I was about 13, this man has been a catalyst of creativity for me. I'm inspired every time I hear his voice.

R.I.P to a legend. 1942-2013

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Reference Image

I start this art piece by blocking in the most obvious shapes. The easiest place I feel in this image would be the forehead. Draw in the shape you see made by the surrounding contrast.

Continue to outline the rest of the face and start piecing in the glasses.

Add the nose. looking back and forth from you reference image to match distance and size.

Draw in the mouth and the rectangle regions on the left side of glasses. This will be the most transparent part, and will not be completely shaded in.

now make place holders for everywhere that has shading. To make things less complicated at first we do not want to worry about exact small details, just general tone level. Squinting your eyes or taking off glasses may help to lessen your view of detail and see the simpler shapes within.

Now we will dive into adding the surrounding contrast that will envelope the lighting on the face and really make this look real.

Crosshatch the opposite direction.

Then smooth over.

Move from a 2H to a B grade pencil and deepen tone level.

Lightly start to distinguish the lighting on face you shaped in with a 2H pencil.

Smooth over with shading stick/Q-tip.

Now I will show you how I accomplish a deeper level of detail for skin texture. Make small notches all over your shading with an eraser.

Now take a 2H/HB pencil and make little dots where the pores would be. This is the most tedious task, but taking your time will be rewarded with a beautifully detailed art piece.

Now when you smooth back over that area you have the illusion of a clean detailed organic texture.

Do the same for the lower face.

And the forehead.

This last step adds the most contrast so I move from a 2B pencil to a 6B and just go back over all the shaded areas I have already made and darken until its a nice even natural shade of black that I am happy with.

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If you have requests for possible future drawings let me know in the comments, and maybe your suggestion will be next.

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Barry F Samways