Cillian Murphy's portrait
Today I’d like to show you how I usually draw portraits. I won’t go deep into anatomy or details in this lesson, we’ll surely take a closer look but in some of future tutorials. Using this portrait as example I’d like to show my pipeline: from constructing to tone working. I know that many of you don’t take care about rules and laws of drawing. You can be an anatomy or chiaroscuro expert or be good in hatching but if you don’t follow the right work sequence you will never get a desired result. I draw on an iPad, with a 6B pencil and a picture of paper in the background. In digital drawing I use the same principles and techniques as in real paper drawing. Therefore, it doesn’t matter where you draw using my tips. The reference is not complicated, the light and shade are quite clear. A well-known actor with very memorable facial features. We will focus on them to convey maximum similarity. The entire lesson will be divided into stages. Each stage has its own important meaning, so I advise you to remember the sequence and apply it in your work.
I start the construction with an image of the skull (circle) and the front side. Step back a centimetre (hair thickness) and draw another line. There is your highest point of the head. You may notice that the height of the entire head is bigger than the height of the front side. Many people know about the proportion: the front part is divided into three equal parts, but few do it correctly. The facial part begins a centimetre below the top of the skull and ends at the bottom of the chin. And the height of the entire head starts from the chin and ends at the top of the hair. That is, if you divide the height of the entire head into three segments, you will get wrong proportions.
Measure the segment at the widest part of the skull and compare it with the height of the entire head. This way you will find more accurate proportions. If you draw all the dimensions by eye without measuring, you will most likely make a mistake and you will not be able to convey a portrait likeness. Also measure the width of the jaw (lower part of the face) and relate it to the height of the head. This way we draw the exact proportional size of the head. Using these tips, you simplify your further work. We can find all other sizes in a similar way, comparing them with the height of the head.
The front side is now divided into three segments. In the reference, the head is slightly raised upward, so the three segments will be reduced in perspective and their sizes will not be equal. The largest section will be the lower part from the nose to the chin, the slightly smaller section will be the section from the eyebrow line to the nose, and the smallest section will be the frontal section.
In a usual view, the ear is at the same level as the base of the nose and the line of the eyebrows. But in our case ear is located a little lower. In the following lessons I will explain the importance of the ear in conveying the correct angle.
After finding the proportions of the face and correct depicting of the ear, I draw the hairstyle, but still don’t do curls. I try to draw a more accurate outline by eye. Draw a line for eyebrows, cheekbones and nose and you will notice the perspective reduction. The line of the cheekbones is not difficult to find. If you imagine your head as a cube, then it will have a side and a front. The line between these sides will be our foreground. The crossing of the eyebrow line and lines of the side edges creates a point (blue points on top). From this point we draw to parallel lines to the bottom (red). In the crossing point (blue points on the bottom) the line of cheekbones is located. This way we got a volumetric form with foreground and background.
The eyes nose and lips are based on spherical shapes. First, I draw spherical shapes in place of parts of the face without detailing. To understand the shape and then correctly convey the volume, you can immediately add light shadows to these forms for better understanding the volume intersection than I fill this lining drawing with details. At this stage it may not look like the reference, but we will work on similarity later.
First, I divide the head in planes. We have already found out that they’re frontal and lateral plane. Now let’s add eye socket plane, the eye bolls fill the sockets. Eyes are in depth that means that the light in this area is dim. Each plane has its own tone. I fill each plane with the tonne using bold stroke. The darkest planes are the shadow under the chin, the shadow of the nose, the shadow under the lower lip, and the shadow of the eyebrows on the top of the eyes. The side of the face will be slightly darker than the front. But on the front side, the background will be slightly darker than the foreground. I do the hair in the darkest tone. Do not draw individual hairs, it should be just a dark mass. Our task at this stage is to correctly decompose tonal relationships without detailing.
In the second step, I divide the head into even more planes. You can find hundreds of them on the face; the more planes, the more voluminous the portrait will be. It is very important not to make them too dark; I shade with light pencil pressure. If you find it difficult to find these planes, you can inspect your face in the mirror. Look at it from different angles and trace where the edges and bends of the same plane with the pile are. How the side of the nose interacts with the bottom of the eye, or how the teres orris muscle smoothly flows into the cheek. For a better understanding, you can touch your face. This is a useful exercise and I often do it myself if I don’t understand something.
All this time we have been shading carelessly, we have a lot of bad tone transitions from light to dark, a lot of ugly lines. At this stage I will cover up the drawing. When I draw on paper, I smudge the pencil drawing with a cotton sponge. All angles and tones are smoothed out, the drawing becomes airy and pleasing to the eye. On the tablet I use the smudge brush with my finger and smooth out any harsh lines and tones.
On top of the smeared drawing, I begin to hatch and highlight the details. Before this, my task was to create volume. And now I'm working on every part of the face in detail. I'll give you some tips on parts of the face.
Eyes. First of all, you need to understand that this is a spherical shape. Even during construction, we have drawn the eyes voluminous, with shadows. Use it now too. Eyebrows, like hair, are spots, on top of which I draw a few hairs with a stroke. Never draw out every hair, it takes a lot of time and does not look voluminous. Eyelashes also should not be detailed. I always draw several patches of eyelashes along the outer edges of the eye, as if I were drawing arrows. This makes the look more beautiful. When I draw the shadow between the eyebrow and the upper eyelid, do not forget about reflexes. In our case, the eyes are set deep inside the socket, so a shadow falls from the upper part of the socket onto the upper eyelid. This is Cillian Murphy's hallmark. The eyeball will never be white. It has its own tone, so I also shade it with a light tone. The pupils visually become lighter towards the bottom due to a reflex from the glare in the upper part of the pupil. I advise you not to detail the two eyes the same way. Let the eye in the background be slightly darker and less detailed. This will create an aerial perspective effect.
Nose. The nose has a frontal, lower and side plane. Each of them has its own tone. In the 3/4 angle, most often the side of the nose will be slightly darker than the front. Also, a shadow falls from the nose and it will be darker than its own shadow on the nose. This is the same if we drew a ball instead of a nose. The ball has a highlight, a tone, its own shadow, a reflex and a cast shadow. First, create the correct volume, and then draw the nostrils, hump or visible cartilage.