How To Plan And Prepare Your Pencil Portrait

In this step of the drawing tutorial, we will be going through the process of choosing a photo to convert to pencil, and then using adopted pencil artist techniques to help us prepare that photo and position it on your paper to create your first pencil portrait.

As the saying goes;

“Fail to plan, and you plan to fail”

This is true for many aspects across life, and drawing a pencil portrait is no exception.

Of course, there are many artists who can create wonderful and awesome pieces of art completely freehand, and seemingly at the drop of a hat. We have all seen such artists in popular tourist spots around the world, creating unique characertures and sketches for the paying public, with so little effort it is quite unbelievable.

What you don’t see though, standing in the street surrounded by an impressed and astounded crowd, is how the street artist got there. How he manages his time effectively to draw as many pictures as he can in order to capitalise as much as he can. After all, tourists haven’t got much time, so they’re not going to wait long for their drawing.

So the artist prepares. He works out exactly how much time he has to spend on each drawing to meet his own targets by the end of the day, and then practices and practices until he can complete a drawing at that target time.

If he didn’t do this, and tried to ‘wing it’ through the day, he would be setting himself up for failure, be left frustrated and surely facing some pretty embarrassing situations!

Give Pencil Portraits The Time They Deserve

Almost every time you come to start a pencil portrait, you will have to go through the same old routine of planning and preparation. It isn’t exciting, and unless you like geometry, isn’t much fun; but it has to be done before the magic can begin.

Without planning and preparing your pencil portrait with care, there really is no point in starting it at all. You will fail. Miserably.

There is some good news, though; it doesn’t take too long to do, and like everything, you will get faster at doing it with every pencil portrait you draw.