Best Photos for Portrait Drawings

What makes a great photo for your portrait drawing? The quality of the photograph is critical and can determine the accuracy of the drawing. The photo doesn't need to be professional, but it should be clear and show the face and all its features.

Here are a few things to consider when deciding what photo to chose.

Exposure: 

The intensity of light falling on your subject. If the image is underexposed or overexposed you lose those fine details that will make your drawing stand out. Most things you can fix with  photo editing software. The problem with exposure issues (especially over exposed photos) is that the information simply is not there to manipulate.

The photo above on the left is overexposed. The problem with photos like this is they leave out the shadows and the details of the face. You miss the shape of the cheeks, nose and other features that make the person an individual.

The second photo is underexposed; this also leaves out the fine details. Instead of missing the shadow you are missing the highlights. That determines the curvature of the face.

The third photo shows that a photo can have spots that are overexposed and have other spots that are underexposed. This is not the worst candidate for a drawing. You can see the shape of the eyes, nose and mouth, but you lose a lot of detail in the eyes, and the shape around the top of the head. You also lose some of the features around the checks and forehead.

Although you could draw any of these pictures and make them look like the people you are drawing you would be missing those fine details that tell their stories. To me it is like having a biography about someone with a clear cover and all the chapter titles, but it's missing all the other content. Sure you would know who they are and some of the highlights, but you would know nothing about their life.

Up Close and personal 

Photos that only contain the information that you are going to include in your drawings are best. If you have a full body shot of someone and zoom in on the face and shoulders it diminishes the quality of the photo. This will make the difference in the details of your drawing mostly around the eyes as the photos below demonstrate.

By zooming in on the eye as the photo on the top right shows. It losses the details of the eye lid, the shading in the eye and the details of the eye lashes. These are the features that determines if your drawing is good or great.

High Resolution:

The resolution of a digital photo is critical. The higher resolution the more you can zoom in to see the fine details of the face that make the individual. Try taking the photo you selected and zoom in until it is about 8 x 10 inches in size. Make sure that you can see all of the little lines and details of the eyes, the nose, and the mouth.  If you can’t distinguish all these details then you may need to select another photo.

If you are scanning a photo to use make sure to scan it at a high resolution. If you need tips on scanning your photos check out How to scan your Images