Pencil Drawing Boy with Ball

Here is a pencil portrait of a little boy that I did a few years ago. It was a rather large portrait, I think on 18x24 paper. I'm pleased with how I drew the overalls - the extra time taken to put in the puckers that fabric naturally has was worth it. I get really bored drawing clothing sometimes.
This is a portrait that I have grown to appreciate more over time too-I think I tend to be too much of a perfectionist, so I think with the passing of time I am able to better appreciate my work. I just wish I had a better photo of it.

Portrait of Two Brothers in Pencil

Pencil Portrait based on a photo of two boys...I changed their positions in the photo to create this portrait. I accidentally posted it to my other blog so you need to click here to see it and read the story about it! OOoops!
LINK

combined portrait of 3 sisters

This is the rough layout for the portrait of three sisters drawn from three separate photos.
I did 2 artworks of the three sisters, as you can see they came out differently. I prefer the 2nd one but the client happily accepted both!

putting several photographic images together to make a new pencil portrait

Here is the completed artwork


Here is a photograph of an artwork while it was in progress. I only had some rather small and blurry snapshots from the 1950's to work with. I scanned them and enlarged them closer to the size they'd be in the portrait. I used several photographs as reference to get the likenesses.

A portrait like this would be approximately $300 currently (a little more than a basic two person portrait, because of the lace wedding dress, veil, and the need to combine so many photos.)

Pencil Portrait of a Little Girl

This is a digital photo of the artwork (above) and it look a little dark. The actual look of the artwork is more like the scan below.

Amazing what adding some hair and clothing details will do. The little girl's name was handlettered at the bottom center of the artwork.
Click here to see the artwork in its earlier state.

James Cook Portrait for Book Illustration

James Cook pencil portrait for the book, What Really Happened During Colonial Times (that's the tentative title I think) for BramleyBooks.com

Little boy pencil portrait drawn from photo

Here is the portrait from the other day, now all finished. If you remember, it was the portrait that just looked like a floating head ( LINK ) .

I ran out of 11x14 paper (gasp! Some on order) but I used 14x17...it can either be cut down or left as is. The image area is all within the 11x14" space though. At least this gives the client some freedom in the framing/matting.

In the reference photo, he is leaning on his side and a bib obscures part of his chin, so I hope I have his chin right. The sweater is out of my imagination, but I did happen across a tiny little photo in a magazine of a little boy about the same age wearing a sweater, and that helped me a bit with the neck length, and where the folds of knit would fall.

Baby boy pencil portrait from photo

Here is a floating head...oh, just kidding...don't worry, he will have a body later! :)
This pencil portrait is at the stage where it is not blended, there are no highlights taken out yet.
I had just stared laying out the dark areas. I worked on the eyes a lot at this point, rather than try to do it after the face is blended and highlighted. To me, the eyes are almost always the key to making the portrait look like the person.

Back to the body, the reference photo showed the little boy lying down and his bib totally obscures his shoulders and neck, so I'll have to determine the neck and shoulder lengths, and then add in clothing. The client told me she wants something like a cable knit sweater or something similar. The baby is 6 months old, so that will give me an idea about how long to draw his neck and shoulders.

I do these pencil portraits on commission, and if you would like a portrait in graphite pencil of a child, Please see my website for more information.
http://www.pencil-portrait-drawing-artist.com/

Graphite pencil portrait of sweet little toddler girl

I'm waiting to hear back from her grandmother regarding how they would like her hair portrayed. Still a lot of work to do, and I'm looking forward to all the small stitched flower details on her shirt. So cute!

Pencil portraits drawn from your photo

Here is an example of one of my pencil portraits drawn from a photograph. You can hire me to draw a portrait for you of yourself, your children, your pets, your home, and more. I'm a published artist and would love to do this for you. Visit my website to get more details and contact me. LINK