Prove yourself as the best artist for the week

Hello friends and fellow artists on Steemit, it's me again, and today I am excited to share another pencil portrait session that I created for the amazing contest titled “Prove Yourself As The Best Artist This Week” organized by @dequeen. Portrait drawing has always been one of my favorite parts of art because it gives me the opportunity to study human expressions deeply while improving my shading and detailing techniques. For this entry, I decided to create a graphite portrait of Dylan O'Brien, one of the actors whose facial features I find very expressive and interesting to draw. Stay tuned as I walk you through the process.

Drawing materials

• A4 paper

• mechanical pencil

• graphite pencils: HB, 2B, 4B, and 6B

• charcoal pencil

• black pen

• eraser

• sharpener

• blending tissue

Step 1

I began by working on the eyes. I slowly shaded the pupils and eyelids while leaving small highlights inside the eyes to create a realistic reflection. I also added soft shadows around the eye area to give the face more depth.

Step 2

Next I added the lips and gradually shaded the face. Using my 2B and 6B pencils, I gradually built shadows around the cheeks and jawline. I also used blending tissue in some areas to smooth the graphite and create soft skin texture.

Step 3

Next was the hair. Instead of shading it as one dark mass, I built the texture gradually with multiple pencil strokes. This helped the strands appear more realistic and gave the portrait more movement. I paid attention to the darker areas around the hairline because they helped increase the contrast of the drawing.

Step 4

At this step, I then added the neck and the clothing. I gradually shaded the neck using my 4B and 6B pencils, and for the clothing, I used my charcoal pencil to shade it black.

Step 5

After several hours of shading, blending, correcting, and refining details, the portrait was finally completed, and below is my final result.

My selfie with my drawing

This artwork reminded me once again that portrait drawing requires patience, observation, and consistency. Thank you all for stopping by my blog and supporting my artistic journey. I hope you enjoyed viewing this pencil portrait drawing of Dylan O'Brien. See you in my next post. ✋

Inviting

@caringmanasseh

@us-andrew

@saintkelvin17

CC @dequeen

THANKS FOR YOUR TIME