10 MISTAKES TO AVOID IN Realistic portrait drawing

By Ava MoradiRealistic Drawing & Shading

Guidance tools

Introduction

Mistake 1 : Start shading and colouring

Mistake 2: Messy and Shaky Lines

Mistake 3: Dirty Shading

Mistake 4: Hasty drawing and outl ines

Mistake 5 : Unsuitable tools

Mistake 6: Not enough layering

Mistake 7 : Contrast and Shading

Mistake 8: Drawing from detai l to whole

Mistake 9: Not enough practice

Mistake 10: Feedback and Practicing

What’s Next?

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C O N T E N T S

Hi my name is Ava Moradi.

Within the last two years I have been fortunate enough to build an audience with over 12,000 students who have completed my art courses and have seen tremendous improvement in their art.

I always check my students progress and all their practices and guide them step by step.

This ebook will teach a l l t h e m i s t a k e s my s t u d e n t s w e n t through and how we have corrected them in time with practice a n d e x p e r i e n c e . H e l p i n g t h i s m a ny people has al lowed m e t o s e e w h e r e most budding artists go wrong.

Now I want to share them with you here. I created this eBook to tell you exactly what not to do if you want to achieve realistic s t y l e a n d c r e a t e beautiful drawings.

L E T S B E G I N.. .

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MISTAKE ONE

START SHADING AND COLOURING BEFORE COMPLETING YOUR DRAWING SKILLS

Realistic drawing Tutorials

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Completing your drawing skills and mak ing sure each human feature portrait and their accuracy is the key to realistic drawing. Many students rush and try to shade and finish their realistic drawing before waiting and practicing the standard face and body format.

When just beginning, you might think “why my drawing and shading is not looking realistic?” and many believe their drawing f law is due to their shading skills. If the drawing looks raw it is not due to shading and layering but it’s about your initial sketching. First, you need to make sure each feature has been drawn in a precise way. This all depends on your circle and oval practice.

You don’t need to use more expensive materials for shading in order to avoid rawness in your drawings. You can create professional realistic drawings by simple tools if you learn the basics of drawing human features and study the standard way to draw portrait features.

01. You need to have enough practice. Practicing lines and circles are not only for beginners but it will improve everyone’s skill, even professionals.

02. Follow this practice routine.

03. Decrease your hand pressure and force. Draw with minimum power and be gentle with the outlines. Let you pencil gently touch the paper without FORCE.

04. Draw fast but accurate. Don’t take your time drawing one circle. When you draw fast, your outline will be better.

05. Avoid irregular lines while hatching. Use correct and same direction hand movements when hatching in order to create perfect chiaroscuro. This applies to shading technqiues as well

Most of the students initially draw messy and shaky lines with heavy and bold outlines that even damage the tooth of their paper. Drawing with fear and using too much force on the wrist and fingers can create sloppy and shaky lines. When your sketch is not neat and force is used, the shading techniques won’t be effective and your drawing will look less realistic. Letting go of fear and loosen your hand and fingers, are the main keys to draw better.

Practicing circles, ovals and l ines or strokes are extremely essential for realistic drawings.

M E S S Y AN D S H AK Y L I N E S

How to practice to get better results when drawing lines?

MISTAKE TWO

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One rookie mistake is when you make your drawing dirty at a very early stage of your drawing

How to avoid dirty shading on our drawing? 1. Don’t use your hand or fingers to make your drawings dirty.

2. Use a paper, preferable a white paper, underneath your hand while drawing. Usually when the hand moves without any protection layer on a pencil or charcoal surface, your drawing and hand would turn black very quickly.

3. Be careful of the amount of darkness on your brush and stump blending. Always test the darkness of your tools on a separate paper before bringing it onto your paper and your main model.

H OW T O AVO I D D I R T Y S H AD I N G O N O U R D R AW I N G?

MISTAKE THREE

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This is a very important and common case among realistic drawing students. Usually at the beginning of drawing, students do not have an estimate drawing time or they are very impatient to finish their sketching and move to the shading part.

Trying to finish your drawings quickly or getting tired because you want to move on, is a very common mistake that should be avoided.

It’s very good to be excited to finish your drawings and see the results, but mostly you need to make sure your outlines are finished so when you start shading the results comes out more accurately. In conclusion, the more skilful an artist becomes, the more time they spend on their sketching part.

H A S T Y D R AW I N G AN D U N F I N I S H E D O U T L I N E S

PATIENCE my art lovers

MISTAKE FOUR

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Using expensive tools and materials won’t make any difference but using the right tools are important. Each tool can make huge difference between an average drawing and a hyper realistic drawing.

For instance, let’s compare two tools together. Willow charcoal stick vs compressed hard charcoal sticks.

They are both similar in price but using compressed hard charcoal sticks will make your drawing more realistic higher quality.

U N S U I TAB L ET O O L S

SUITABLE: Compressed Charcoal StickPRICE:£1.70

SUITABLE: Willow Charcoal StickPRICE: £2.29

MISTAKE FIVE

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The more you repeat this circle the better and more realistic results you will get in your drawings. In this way your shading becomes more natural in each process. After repeating this process, your drawing will have more depth, highlights, shades and most importantly natural. So, don’t be afraid to use more darkness in your drawings either with charcoal sticks or charcoal powders.

Creating enough layers while shading is the golden key in realistic drawing. The rule of this golden key circle is “Shading – Blending – Highlights – Blending” and repeating this process.

N O T E N O U G H L AY E R I N G

COURAGE my dears

MISTAKE SIX

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L I T T L E C O N T R A S T AN D L E V E L L E D S H AD I N G

So, the key is the balance between enough shading and not enough shading.

A common mistake that can be seen in most of the beginners’ drawings is in their light and not uniform shading, following “Mistake Number 6”.

W h i l e p r a c t i c i n g p o r t r a i t drawing, try to be careful not to suddenly darken your model and practice. But not adding enough shading layers and even out the highlights can turn your realistic drawing more into cartoonish or flat style. There would be no

visible contrast and not much opacity, therefore, your portrait drawing will become completely flat and unreal.

Gradually keep adding darkness o n t o y o u r m o d e l . A l o t o f students either use not enough darkness and turn their portrait into a white portrait with too much light or they darken it way too much that can’t be erased later on and their drawing looks muddy.

MISTAKE SEVEN

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The beginning of any drawing or painting should be done from the whole and then go into details. Details should be added at the end of each facial feature drawing.

This will make each part of the face and facial features to have appropriate size. Some students start to draw the details first and then realise that their drawing has no beauty or resemblance to their model when they look at it from distance.

D R AW I N G F R O M D E TAI L T O W H O L E

N O T E N O U G H P R A C T I C E

MISTAKE NINE

This is a simple mistake that doesn’t need to write a lot about it. If you don’t have enough practice any golden key or any hidden tips won’t be useful. Vey simple.

So, have enough practice and don’t give up at the beginning of your drawing. It will get better step by step, not suddenly.

MISTAKE EIGHT

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N O T H AV I N G T H E R I G H T F E E D BA C K AN D K E E P P R A C T I C I N G T H E M I S TAK E S

MISTAKE TEN

I f y o u s t a r t d r a w i n g o r shading and keep repeating the same mistake over and over again that will stay with you for a long time and it would be hard to correct it later on. So, it’s important to have the right feedback from your instructor, teacher or anyone who has experience in art at early stages.

D o n ’ t k e e p p r a c t i c i n g mistakes and get used to wrong techniques.

For guidance and feedback, you can always contact me.

Contact me

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Practicing and learning is the key. Learning the techniques and try to master them alone. Learning them without guidance might be frustrating and it may make you lose confidence, and it might not give you the right ending result. Learning from other artists is one of the fastest ways to learn about new tools and techniques. Break bad habits and start seeing improvement in your own art. I can help you with that!

MASTERCLASS

1 . M a s t e r c l a s s o f R e a l i s t i c Drawing and Shading Human Features2 . M a s t e rc l a s s of D ra w i n g , D e s i g n a n d C re at i v i t y w i t h Colour pencils and Pastels

Includes: - Each course consists of 30 hrs HD video tutorials with voice narration of different drawing and painting processes.- Unlimited and life time access to all the videos.- Material and tool list and how to use them.- Exclusive feedbacks for each of your practices - Monthly update to your emails.

W H AT N E X T?

Feel free to try out both courses and memberships, look at the free resources and find which one suits you the best.

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T O L E AR N M O R E AB O U T AL L T H E S E M I S TAK E S AN D S TAR T F O L L OW I N G S T E P BY S T E P YO U C AN C H E C K O U T M Y AR T C O U R S E S.

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