Drawing portraits.

Lately I've been working on drawing people. What I find to be the most difficult part is the details of the face, and their orientation. On Youtube, there are time lapse videos of drawings/paintings of portraits taken from photographs. here is a video of someone painting Johnney Depp, using the dry brush technique.

This is an incredible example, and obviously took much more time to complete. The artist said their works from photographs usually take 4-5 hours.
The dry brush technique is wiping paint off the brush until it is nearly dry, then applying to the paper, giving it an airbrushed look. This allows for much more detail in portraits and other subjects.
When doing the parts of the face, I personally like doing the eyes the best. I've had much more practice with them over the years, and I think of other facial features, my eyes turn out the best. I typically draw, but I also plan on experimenting with painting portraits.

Here is another time-lapse video, but of an eye exclusively. I really like this video, because the artist tells you what he's doing, and gives you pointers along the way. The piece was done in water color and colored pencil.

There is incredible, yet subtle detail. What the artist says is true: the more you put into fine-tuning, the better it will look.
The mouth is always the one that throws me off. If you at all screwed up the placement of the eyes or nose of the face, then the mouth will be even more skewed. The face is made of near-perfect proportions, that is applied to everyone.

A common mistake in drawing is putting the eyes too high up on the face. What many people don't know, is that the eyes are in the exact middle of the head. From the top of the head to the eyebrows, from the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose, then from the nose to the chin are each one-third of the head.
As for the lips, I've been told different things. I've heard it's halfway between the nose and the chin, and I've heard it's one-third of the way to the chin. However, I have had it confirmed that it is indeed one-third. I still have trouble placing it. Too big, too small, to wide, etc. I'm always erasing the mouth.
Once you have the general features of the face, I move into the shading of the skin. Above your eyes, below your mouth, along your jawline and just below the cheekbone is where I see most of the darker spots. It's hardly distinctive when you look at someone casually, but when you search for it, you can typically pinpoint the lights and darks. They are generally very subtle, depending on the lighting, but are exaggerated on paper.













In this drawn-from-photograph portrait of Hugh Laurie as House, the artist exaggerated the darkness in his hair, and above his eyes, while intentionally leaving the lights lighter, such as in the whites of his eyes, along the inner cheekbone, and his forehead. The lights and darks of a piece are called values, and the artist emphasizes them to make the whole piece pop. It's subtle, but highly effective.

I've done this in a number of my pieces, to also try and get the whole piece to stand out. It does a lot, as long as you exaggerate within reason. More often than not, however, I find myself looking back and wishing I had exaggerated more.