Drawing a Toothy Smile with Soft-Focus Effect

Begin by building a grid of matching proportions around the reference material and drawing paper.

The two frames don’t need to be the same size, but the length and width of the drawing frame must be proportional to the reference material in order for the grid to work.

Next, mark equal increments around all sides of both the reference frame and the drawing frame, and label them the same.

It may be helpful to label the upper and lower width on both alphabetically, and the vertical sides numerically.

To use the grid, place a drawing triangle along the vertical edge of the reference frame, and mark off the important points of the largest shapes of the portrait.

In this case, that would include the top of the hat, the top of the forehead, the bottom of the chin, and both sides of the face.

Use very light pencil lines to translate those lines to the drawing paper, then sketch the rough shape of the face, neck and shoulders within those guidelines.  Erase the guidelines, and briefly clean up the lines to make them more clear and accurate.

Follow the same procedure to place guidelines for the features of the face, working until you have a box established for eyes, nose, and mouth.

Translate those lines to the drawing as well, then sketch the shape of each feature within the guidebox and erase the guidelines.

Then, clean up the lines of the features and re-draw them with more care.

Take a long time on this step, and don’t move forward until you’re perfectly satisfied with the way everything looks on the face.

When you’re confident that the face is recognizable and accurate, cover all the skin tone with an even pass of light charcoal.

Do this by holding the pencil on the side, and at the very back so that you can’t bear down at all.

When everything is covered, blend the skin tone smooth with a chamois cloth wrapped around your finger, then go back and darken the lines that got smudged out.

Add detail to the features and shadow shapes to the face by adding darker tones to the darkest parts of the face, then blend the shadows into the rest of the skin tone with a large stomp or chamois cloth.

You should be constantly going back and forth between adding tone with the pencil, blending with a stomp or tortillon, and pulling out lights with a kneaded eraser.

Darken the hair using a charcoal pencil on the side, paying attention to the lights and darks in the hair, and following the direction of the hair growth.

You can indent some highlights with a stylus if desired, then go over the top with additional charcoal and blend the area in direction of hair growth with a blending tool.

To get the soft focus look, simply keep the lines on the outside of the hair, hair, and shirt undefined and blend over the top with a chamois cloth.

Add detail to the hat and shirt with a series of blending stomps, keeping the tone very light on the hat and drawing the pattern on the shirt before darkening the tones there too much.

Blend the tone with a stomp or tortillon, then add additional detail as needed with a pencil and kneaded eraser.

Don’t forget the importance of strong contrasts in your drawing; you want to have a variety of hard and soft edges, dark and light lines, and a variety of shades of gray ranging from white to black in the drawing.

It’s the contrast that catches the viewer’s eye and gives the drawing strength, so don’t underplay it and wind up with a blasé drawing.  Be bold!

Enjoy!

Sharon Grey – Artist
Drawing Made Easy