Pencil Of Doom

The first challenge you face with any commission portrait is acquiring a suitable picture of your subject customer.This object could be a person, pet, or a building.

It is now time to be a bit authoritarian. You should always insist on certain minimum requirements regarding the quality of the photograph. Otherwise, you're sure to fail in your pencil portrait drawing effort.

Naturally, the higher the quality of the photograph, the more chance you have to produce an excellent picture. Although most clients understand this, you'd be surprised how many horrible pictures that I received.

There are several reasons for this. For example, some clients have a photo taken with a disposable camera or have only a fuzzy old wedding photo of their parents. It will not, unless there is a clear understanding with your client before you start drawing.

From experience I can tell you that if the photo is bad, ie, insufficiently resolved, you are doomed to fail and you will not be able to produce a good likeness. Therefore, you have a dissatisfied customer who often question your skills instead of the quality of their image. To avoid such situations, here are some guidelines.

* If your client has a digital photograph, insisting on size. Jpg and a resolution of 300 dpi (dots per inch).

* When the image is to be taken, insist on using a camera of 5 mega pixels or more digital and make sure that your client sends you the unedited version (no crop or resize) the picture .

* If the customer has only a photo paper (often a former request) between them, if possible, scan their computer and email it to you first. This will give you the opportunity to judge the quality of the picture before snail mail, they will the original. Again, you should insist on a resolution high enough.

Here are some additional suggestions you can give to your client:

* For photo paper, insist on head size at least 2.5 to 3.5 inches, measured from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin. The smaller sizes are much more difficult to work.

* Tell your client to avoid topics related to abnormally large smiles. In fact, without a smile is often casual portraits for more convincing.

* If the image is to be taken, advise your client not to use the flash. The flash tends to remove the natural shadows that are very important in drawing a pencil portrait. In addition, the light from the side of a light source is a nice bonus.

* If possible, ask your client to send you several pictures of the item, including some close-ups. This will give you a much better idea of the unique qualities and personality of the subject. It will also reveal many small details that are critical to achieve a good likeness of the subject.

* For group portraits, insist not only on a group photo, but also on separate photos of each subject. This allows you to produce a better fitting or gluing the group.
* If all else fails and, if possible, take photographs in themselves.

Of course, in practice, we often may be to settle with less. And you can often settle for less. However, what you can not do without the resolution is sufficiently high. From experience I can tell you that there is no way around that. A blurred photo will not do so unless your client wants a blurred image on the purpose and is only interested in the artistic qualities of the benefit and not in a good likeness.

Thus with a suitable photo in hand, we are now ready to begin the actual drawing, without sabotaging our efforts from the outset.