Heidi Klum is a face everyone has probable seen somewhere at some point in their life. 🙂 I hoped to do her justice and drew this freehand graphite drawing in 2019.
Etsy link for prints:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/710104375/drawing-print-of-heidi-klum
Etsy link for the original drawing:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/696988016/heidi-klum-original-sketch-not-a-print
Hi, I’m a novice/amateur graphite artist, and my goal is to become proficient in graphite portraits. I discovered you while browsing for graphic drawings and I find your work very inspiring. I was wondering if you could give me any tips for freehand drawing and shading? Also, have you considered posting any drawing tutorials? Thanks in advance☺️
Hi Daniel! Thanks so much for the kind words. 🙂 Good question about tips! Ha. I always struggle with what to advise. I draw every single day – even if it’s for a short time, and I find that’s helped a lot. Also pushing myself past when I feel something is good enough or done – to spend a little more time on it. For shading, use various grades of pencil weights — use the 4H to lightly lay something out, and 2H to go a little darker, then H to go a little darker, and so on. I usually blend with my finger and sometimes the corner of a standard table napkin (Clean, of course 🙂 ). For freehand, sometimes breaking down the image into shapes helps – turn the source image, and your pad, upside down so you’re not so focused on drawing a nose or an eye, but the shape of it and its relationship to other shapes around it.
As for tutorials, I do have a youtube page, but just timelapse drawings and stuff. I don’t have any tutorials. I don’t feel like I have a strong enough method to tell people that’s how it’s done. haha
Hope that helps! Keep drawing!
Thanks for your response!
I’ll definitely try the upside down method soon. Maybe I’ll let you know how it goes. Also, have you heard that blending with your finger puts oils on the paper which can damage it? Idk how true it is.
It’s probably true, but I still do it – and the drawings seem fine. It helps not to have excessively dirty fingers when you do it too 😉 (Like don’t handle food and then blend haha) But I’ve been doing it for 8 or 9 years and haven’t noticed any significant issues. Besides, it’s almost impossible not to get your hand on the drawing at all, so you’re bound to get oils on it at some point while drawing.