Drawing or painting a person is challenging, but achieving likeness in portraiture is an art form. The difference between a portrait that looks like the subject or not can be in mere millimeters. However, if we approach it in a very mathematical way, our model will lose its soul, and we won’t capture the essence of the portrait. Therefore, it’s essential to find a balance between interpretation and accuracy. The sketch combines both tools—interpretation and accuracy.
10 Key Points to Keep in Mind to Achieve Likeness in Portraiture
1. Get to Know Your Model Well
If we only have one image of our model and haven’t seen them in person before, it will be difficult to capture their essence. Ideally, you should work from life, as you will have a real view of your model, with only your eyes serving as the intermediary to capture their essence. However, this is not always possible.
You should use multiple images of your subject to understand their angles and expressions. Finally, choose the one that best captures their essence for the portrait.
2. Avoid Drawing from Screens (Computer, Mobile, or Tablet)
It’s recommended to use a paper copy until you gain more experience for three reasons:
- The backlit screen distorts tonal values, creating frustration when trying to capture strong light.
- The ability to zoom in and out of images on screens leads to confusion about proportions and encourages tunnel vision, which is unhelpful for drawing.
- Using paper allows you to draw directly on it, trace movement, study shadows, and angles.
3. Identify Movement
There are three possible movements in the head: rotation, tilt, and flexion. Identifying and expressing these movements is crucial to prevent the portrait from appearing too stiff and unnatural. While this is not easy, there are tricks to recognize movement and achieve likeness.
4. Avoid Tunnel Vision to Achieve Likeness in Portraiture
When drawing and painting, your posture is essential. If you are seated or too close to the paper, a phenomenon called tunnel vision occurs. This limits your viewing angle, making it impossible to relate the different parts of the portrait simultaneously, leading to mistakes.
Step back from your drawing regularly. Drawing while standing allows for a more active relationship with the artwork and enables you to view the whole piece and compare it.
5. Use Symmetry Axes to Achieve Likeness in Portraiture
This should be mandatory for any portrait. Unless you’re tracing, if you don’t use symmetry axes, unwanted shifts in your portrait are likely to occur. You can also use these in the painting process with pastel pencil, which can be easily erased with water.
For achieving likeness, it’s also advisable to use axes as starting points for measurements to avoid cumulative measurement errors. These occur if you use progressive reference points (i.e., the previous measure) instead of a common starting point for all measurements.
6. Use Straight Lines, Not Curves
A curve consists of millions of intersecting points. Copying a specific curve precisely is difficult because the reference of thousands of points is overwhelming. However, simplifying the strokes into straight lines uses only two points as a reference, making it easier to identify significant angle changes and work with greater precision.
7. Observe Negative or Unnamed Spaces
Our mind often tricks us into focusing on things we’ve named (eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows). However, it is our eye, not our mind, that should guide our drawing or painting. Therefore, every inch of our portrait offers valuable information.
The spaces between the eyebrows, eyes, or mouth are just as important as the features themselves and should be studied and worked on the same way. They will help the features not look like isolated islands on the face and will act as bridges connecting the parts. You can use grids to outline the face but must then add the physical traits of your subject.
8. Relate Distant Parts
Use guide lines in your drawing, vertical and horizontal lines, or those with the same angle of movement as the portrait. These will help you correct possible shifts and give you crucial clues to achieve likeness.
9. Stay True to the Shadows to Achieve Likeness in Portraiture
Shadows are your best ally in finding likeness. Often, we become obsessed with a feature, like the mouth, thinking it doesn’t look right and continuously correcting the lip contour lines. However, we neglect the lights and shadows that shape the muscular volume around it. Just think of the Mona Lisa’s smile—the shadows around her mouth suggest the smile, not the lips.
You can help yourself by drawing the shapes of the shadows like a map on the paper. It’s not just about placing a light or shadow; it’s about placing it exactly in the right spot, with the correct tone and shape.
10. Break the Rules
Give yourself expressive license to accentuate what defines your model and emphasize what stands out to you as an artist. Sometimes you must break the rules and not be so meticulous—remember that every face is unique, and every artwork is too.