Portrait of Dad, Age 8
Dad was a good sport for letting me put this picture of him on the internet. This is a pencil crayon portrait I drew of my father when I was about 8 years old. I've been reading up on human portrait techniques now that I am painting one, and I thought this picture would be useful to illustrate a common mistake when drawing faces.
Portraits have low tolerance for error, and it's very easy to misplace the eyes. Most people think of the eyes as being in the top third of the face, well above the middle, but if you look objectively, you'll see that the eyes are almost exactly halfway between the top of the head and the chin. In this picture, I've got the ears in the right place, but the eyes are too high up. The eyes and ears should line up.
Dad does not have an unusually long chin and short forehead, but I now realize I drew him this way because I was about two feet shorter than him at the time, so I always saw his face from below.
Tomorrow, I'll be showing the next step on my human portrait of Genie.