Learn How to Draw a Male Portrait!

The digital drawing techniques for drawing a male portrait will require a good eye in seeing planes on the face.

This is due to the idea that, unlike the female face, the male face is usually more angular to depict a strong sense of masculinity.

Over the course of this lesson, we will build a gesture drawing, using hard angles, which we can use to fill in the details.

While it may look difficult at first, I still want you to follow the lesson as best as you can since challenging what your limits is one of the best ways to learn.

So let's create a new layer on your digital canvas and begin this lesson on drawing a male portrait!

1. The basic sketch

If you're comfortable creating a face from scratch, then by all means do so! Otherwise, you can use a reference from a live model or from a magazine for this step.

Your gesture sketch of the head should focus on getting the right proportions and creating some hard angle planes on the face.

Some specific facial features that you want to focus on are thick eyebrows, a chiseled chin, indented cheeks, angular eyes, and a strong nose.

male portrait

Another good tip is to draw the hair in such a manner that it emphasizes a square head shape. Even sideburns can really emphasize the vertical features of a square head.

Of course, if your subject has long hair, you don't need to use this tip.

If you can, try to incorporation a thick neck with broad shoulders. This will suggest further masculine features that are important to drawing a male portrait.

2. Blocking in details

This next step, in drawing a male portrait, requires you to paint in a colored base to block in light and shadows. To do that, create a new layer under your gesture drawing.

Use a brush with 100% pressure and pick a dark grey color. From there, fill in the shape of the head based on you gesture drawing.

Then, merge the layers together. You should get a solid grey object that has your gesture drawing lines.

Now, take a series of chalk brushes and begin blocking in patches of white to signify which facial features will stand out.

male portrait

For example, block in light spots for the eyelids, cheeks, chin, underneath the neck, the forehead, the collar bones, etc. Basically, use the planes from the gesture sketch as your guide.

Obviously, you can block in dark spots to emphasize shadow like areas near the head (predominantly where the hair covers) and the inner ear.

You would be amazed at the type of textures you can from blocking in sections of light and dark shadows from your digital chalk brush.

3. Smudging and repainting

Now that you have a nice 3d base to work with, it's time to add details that will bring it to life.

There are two primary brushes that you can use for drawing a male portrait: hard chalk brushes and soft round brushes.

Whether you are using the eraser tool, the paintbrush, or the smudge tool, keep these two types of brush heads in mind.

First, use the smudge brush and a soft round head to smudge certain facial features in place.

Primary spots to focus on are the eyebrows, the underside of the lips, the underside of the chin, the cheeks, the forehead, and the nose bridge.

Sometimes, you can smudge with a very small chalk brushes to get fine details like eyelashes.

After that, you can start working on the details.

For the majority of the time, you will be using various chalk brush sizes to paint details. The advantage of the chalk brushes is that it will help separate facial features by giving your strokes a strong outline.

male portrait

Optimal places to use the chalk brush here would be the out ear, the eye bags, nostril outlines, outlining the lips, eyelids, and pupil reflections in the eyes (just to name a few).

If your character is turning to one side, don't forget to paint in the tendons of the neck muscles connecting to the collar bones.

Always keep your eyedropper tool handy! You should be sampling colors on the portrait itself as you don't want strong deviations in color intensity.

This way, all your colors are in a nice range that compliments each other.

4. Finishing male portrait touches

Continue to finish off your details. Use the eraser tool to define the outline of your portrait. As well, use the smudge tool to smudge in the hair.

Use a small chalk brush and create a rim light outlining the chin to separate it from the neck.

Once all the details are done, it's time to look at where your light source is located in this final step of drawing a male portrait.

If you done all the details on separate layers, merge it or group it all together as a means to keep thing simple.

At this point, we are going to create a new layer on top of your portrait layer. The first thing you should do is set this new layer's transparency to around 50%.

That way, the light source that you will be painting will create a nice hazy effect as well preserving all your hard work in painting in the details of the face.

Use a small chalk brush to put in where the light will hit the hair. Switch to a smaller brush if you need to work on the individual strands of hair. You can also work on the strands of hair in your original portrait layer.

Use a large light colored chalk brush on the rest of the body such as the light source hitting the neck, the neck tendons, the bridge of the nose, and reflections off the lips.

male portrait

On the other end, use a dark colored value to paint in the shadow of the head.

Any time the lines from the chalk brush become too strong, switch to a soft round brush and smudge it into place.

Finally, you can glaze the entire outline of your portrait drawing to help your subject blend into the white background.

I know it seems challenging at first, but I hope this lesson on drawing a male portrait will help you build a strong artistic foundation as well as expanding your comfort zone.

If you haven't already, submit your artworks as I look forward to your growth into an excellent digital painter!