How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs
Original price was: $24.99.$17.70Current price is: $17.70.
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If you’ve always wanted to draw beautiful, realistic-looking portraits of your favorite people, this step-by-step guide shows you how to do it – better and more easily than you ever thought possible.
Lee Hammond quickly teaches you how to add the illustration of three-dimensional highlights and shadows to simple shapes using pencil shading and blending. After you’ve got the basics down, you’ll learn how to use the same techniques to portray every feature of the human face. You’ll also discover how to figure out what the features of your photographed model really look like so you can draw them from different angles. Then Hammond shows you how to put all those features together to create a lifelike portrait that truly captures the individuality of your subject.
After you’ve completed these easy-to-do drawing exercises, you’ll soon be turning the memories frozen in your old snapshots into warm, beautiful works of art.
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177 reviews for How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs
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Original price was: $24.99.$17.70Current price is: $17.70.
J-S –
very helpful.
Paige Goodworth –
I learned everything I know about art from this book
I currently bartend
NABIN GURUNG –
good
pez –
Very easy book to follow helps you a lot whenyour strugglin to draw portraits
Mrs S –
Love books by Lee Hammond as she really explains what to look out for and gives a boost to your confidence. Lovely step by step projects to complete making this another good informative book for my collection. Excellent purchase.
Amazon Customer –
just what I needed at the time,thank u
Rachel –
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As someone who has always loved — and always struggled with — drawing, I studied Lee Hammond’s books as a kid. My work improved considerably, going from cartoonish to moderately recognizable. Still, it was nowhere near good.
After a four or so year hiatus from drawing, I picked up my pencils earlier this year. As usual, my art disappointed me. I still remembered some of Lee Hammond’s tips and techniques from reading them years ago, but not enough. So I ordered this book.
I don’t know how to describe what happened, except that something “clicked” in my head. Don’t get me wrong…my art is still not great. I still struggle with getting things “right”. I still find (many) flaws with my work. But now I can make things that look pretty good (as opposed to barely passable). Now I don’t just see “something wrong” with what I’ve done…I can tell what is, and try to get it better next time. My shading, my detail, my work on features — all of these have improved so much thanks to Lee Hammond’s books. (And I can see where they need so much more improvement).
This book goes through step-by-step details on the features of the face, the face as a whole, and different types of hair (a huge weak point for me). Her tips are simple. You can work on simple exercises — draw a particular feature, put together what you see, one graph square at a time, etc. She recommends graphing at first. (I don’t do this…I think my art would be better if I did, but it seems like too much of a crutch to me). Then you can put it all together.
My only complaint with this book is that it focuses mostly on drawing light-skinned people; but it looks like version two remedies that. I don’t have the new version of this book yet, but plan on getting it. (I also have the How to Draw Pets book — also fantastic). This book, though, quite literally saved me from giving up in frustration at my lack of ability — highly recommended, even if you’re not terribly artistically gifted (like me). If you have the desire to draw and commitment to keep at it, Lee Hammond will give you the know-how and perspective to do it.
The video I’ve attached is a chronicle of my progress. You can see how my drawing has improved (and, of course, still stands to improve a lot more). And, for that improvement, I give all credit to Lee Hammond and her guides. She is a master artist, and her books truly are the best I’ve seen out there! Cannot recommend enough.
Amazon Customer –
I was a pencil artist over 20 years ago and took my almost natural gift for granted. I loved to draw from the very first moment I drew something well. I remember saying in suprize “It feels like I can breathe for the very first time…as though I’d been holding my breathe forever.” I was taught using various methods with “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” as the basic text, so all my work was freehand. Thus I had great disdain for grafting. Even when enlarging from tiny old photographs I only used my eyes and I was very good. But things changed and I learned a much needed lesson in grace and humility.
Gradually over the last ten years there has been damage to the right side of my brain. I have for all intents and purposes lost most if not all of my artistic ability. I felt devistated when the Neurologist confirmed the test results last month. However, she did send me to a very good therapist who decided to work with me to cross train my left brain to do the right brain’s artistic function as far as drawing was concerned. The first thing she did was an assessment, the next talk to me about learning to draw with grafts, and I remembered this book and how I no longer had my copy and needed a new one.
It’s always easy to find fault with someone who does things differently than you do, and that stuck out in the reviews like a sore thumb. Grafting is not freestyle. It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to teach those whose skills are not strong, how to SEE. Right now their left brain won’t shut off long enough to let them see and draw what’s in front of them. A graft will help shut that down. Eventually, they arn’t going to need grafts. I’m not going to be that lucky. But at least I’ll be drawing and without Lee Hammond’s work I wouldn’t have that much.
If you are fortunate enough to draw well, that’s great.It’s a gift of life that is very rare. I am 1/4 Native American and for me this was a sacred experience that I disrespected instead of honoring. Perhaps this book will give me a way to make amends to All That Is.
I would like to say,I’ve read several reviews that have been written by well trained pencil artists and I’m suprized at what they’ve said. As artists, particularly pencil artists, we are suposed to be sensitive to all that is around us. We have to “draw it in” in order to draw it at all. We don’t walk up to our work. We have our eyes and our brains coax it, to bring it’s essence as well as it’s form to us. None of us got this way overnight. Our inspiration had to be breathed into our being and our work. So, Please don’t knock a tool or a person that can and will help those who are not like you…yet. They have the right and the need to feel what we feel, the “whole-y-ness” of our art.” And they might turn away from this clear source of help if an “expert” says it’s “no good,” and never know that experience because of what they have read. This is not the book for a professional artist but it just might be step one for a person who has lots of blocks to cut through because of say “cartooning.” Then they can go on to “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,” by Betty Edwards, or books by Maltzman, or Petrie etc. when they are ready. They can always prowl through the stacks here at Amazon and look inside at books before they buy. Thank you to Lee Hammond and to Amazon for the opportunity to write these reviews.
PDA –
An excellent absolute beginner’s book. [Just exactly what I was looking for.] Explains how to shade, shape, and properly proportion every facial feature and then how to put them all together in a well done ‘portrait’ — using only a photograph. A must have for every beginner intending to draw faces. Be warned, however, that this book teaches to draw ‘lifelike’ in an ILLUSTRATIVE genre, as opposed to ‘REALISTIC’ [or ‘REALISM’]. An example of the difference would be a Norman Rockwell style drawing [illustrative] and any of the old masters [realistic]. This book teaches illustrative, Norman Rockwell style drawing.
So this book not the only beginner’s book you should have if ‘lifelike’ and ‘realistic’ together is what you really want. You should also have ‘Drawing on the right side of the Brain — Betty Edwards and How to Draw What You See — Rudy de Reyna.
Also, I bought this book used hardcover from ‘melisasandy’ in Amazon Marketplace and although it was advertised as good condition, it came in very excellent condition. If you are going to buy any books used, this is the third book I bought through ‘melisasandy’ and all arrived in excellent condition. I recommend you buy your used books from them when you can..