How to Learn Portrait Drawing
at The Drawing Source

By Marina Fridman, MFA, BFA

Welcome to the Portrait Drawing Learning Path at The Drawing Source. Here you’ll discover how to learn to draw the portrait in 4 phases – and the prerequisite drawing skills you should have before studying this challenging but rewarding drawing subject.

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Why Foundational Drawing Skills Come First

Portrait drawing is one of the most rewarding subjects in realistic drawing — and one of the most humbling. There's something deeply compelling about capturing a person's likeness, the sense that a real, specific human being is looking back out of the paper.

But the face is complex. It contains countless proportions, the intricate construction of the head, the anatomy of each feature, and the subtle values and edges that make skin, eyes, and expression feel alive — all interacting at once.

This is why portrait drawing is not a beginner subject. Attempted too early, without strong foundations, it quickly becomes overwhelming — and discouraging.

Notice on the curriculum map above: portrait drawing does not come first, because it's Foundational Drawing Skills that unlock your ability to draw portraits successfully.

Take measuring, for example — a foundational skill in the Proportion and Shape category. One of the greatest challenges in portrait drawing is capturing a likeness, or resemblance, so that our drawing actually looks like our model. Likeness is achieved by drawing accurate proportions and shapes.

The reason likeness can be such a struggle is that students often attempt portraits before acquiring the measuring skills needed to draw accurate proportions.

A small error that would go unnoticed on a bowl of fruit reads immediately as "that doesn't look like them" in a portrait drawing.

The techniques don't change. What changes is:

• The complexity of the subject, and
• The level of accuracy and control at which we must be able to use our foundational skills

In the Atelier at The Drawing Source, you can learn 10 ways to measure and draw accurate proportions, working with simplified versions of the portrait and features of the face from the beginning of the program.

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Why Students Are Often Discouraged by Portrait Drawing
(and what to do about it)

If you’ve ever felt discouraged drawing the portrait, it’s not because you “can’t draw” — drawing is a learnable skill.

It’s usually because:

1) Your foundational skills need strengthening
2) You don’t yet have a clear system for learning how to draw the portrait
3) You haven’t learned the portrait-specific knowledge required (how to construct the head and features of the face, anatomy, and how to bring it all together in a rendered portrait drawing)

None of these mean you lack ability.
You simply haven’t been shown the full process – in the right order.

The good news: all of this is learnable, and there's a sequence for doing it.

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How to Learn Portrait Drawing in 4 Stages

Before moving intensively into portrait drawing, your foundational skills should already be developing. Once they are, learning portrait drawing unfolds in four major steps:

First, we learn how to start a portrait drawing by exploring the head both as distinct 2D shapes and as simplified 3D forms – and we learn to place the features of the face in their correct spots.

At this stage, we’re not drawing detailed eyes, noses or mouths. We’re learning to quick-sketch the head as a simple, believable form, and to establish where each feature belongs.

This is an essential skill whether your goal is to draw finished, fully-rendered portrait drawings, or to quick-sketch heads while figure drawing.

The whole head, in full detail, is overwhelming to learn all at once – so we start with just the framework, enough to place everything correctly, before going deeper. This is the first, light pass at the head. It also gives us a chance to develop the foundational skills of proportion, shape, and construction that we’ll need to continue successfully to the next stages of learning the portrait.

You can develop these skills in: Portrait Drawing Quickstart (coming soon!)
The Portrait Drawing Quickstart course will teach you a clear, reliable system for starting a head drawing and placing the features of the face accurately, in any pose and at any angle.

In the meantime, you can start developing your essential foundational drawing skills — proportion, shape, and construction — in the Atelier at The Drawing Source, working with simplified versions of the portrait and features of the face.

Related pages:

Next we zoom in to study the features of the face individually — how to draw the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. We learn the anatomy of each feature, how to block it in, construct it, and shade it realistically.

Each feature of the face deserves its own focused study, rather than being rushed through as part of the whole face. Learning them one at a time is far less overwhelming, and leads to deeper understanding and, ultimately, better portrait drawings.

We can also study how to draw hair at this stage.

Learn more on these pages:

Related courses:

The Eye Drawing Intensive — a deep dive into drawing the eye realistically, from construction through to detailed rendering. You'll learn the anatomy of the eye, how to block it in and construct it accurately, and how to shade it convincingly.

Courses on the rest of the features of the face are currently in development.

Here we return to the head as a whole, deepening our understanding of the skull, the anatomy of the head, and the planes of the face.

In our initial construction of the head (step 1), we could only place the features with simple lines because we didn't yet know how they were built. Having studied the features in depth, we can now integrate them into a fully constructed head.

Finally, we bring everything together — all of our foundational skills, plus our portrait-specific knowledge — to draw a complete, shaded portrait from start to finish.

This is where the portrait fully comes to life: accurately proportioned, three-dimensionally constructed, and rendered with the values, edges, and refinement that make it feel real.

Related pages:

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Learn How to Draw Realistic Portraits

Ready to start learning how to draw realistic portraits, in the right sequence?

If you're new to realistic drawing in general:
Start by developing your foundations in the Atelier, a structured curriculum that builds the essential skills every portrait depends on — proportion and shape, construction, value structure, and edge design.

You’ll work with simplified portraits and features from the beginning, preparing you for the full complexity of a finished portrait drawing in more advanced courses.

If you have solid foundational skills and want to take on the features of the face:
Take the Eye Drawing Intensive — a deep dive into drawing the eye realistically, from construction through to detailed rendering. It's the ideal place to begin your feature studies.

Courses on the rest of the features of the face are on the way, as well as Portrait Drawing Quickstart, courses on head construction, anatomy, and rendering a finished portrait.

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