Need Help with the basics: Portraits.

[sudden vale]

Brutal Critique Encouraged!
Red Lines / Draw overs are always welcome!

I've been having difficulty with drawing in general for several years now. I have chosen to focus on learning to draw portraits because I'm incredibly bad at it. I have failed to make any progress for an excessive period of time and I really want to find out what I am doing wrong. Most of the time my drawings barely resemble the subject in any manner. Proportions are way off and placement of the features always seems off. Everything just looks wrong and most of the time I am unable to pin point as to why.

Flipping the drawing upside down doesn't seem to do much for me and using a grid made everything look flat; aside from that nothing carried over from it. It was only helpful in learning how to draw with a grid and nothing else.

I have already been through Andrew Loomis's books "Fun with a Pencil" and "Drawing the Human Head and Hands" but, neither have helped. I found Betty Edwards "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" confusing and unhelpful as well. I have also watched various Youtube videos like Proko , Scrya and Draw Like a Sir but, none of these have been helpful.

I managed to get to finish lesson 5 in draw a box a year ago or so but, I've never managed to incorporate what I learned from it into anything else.

Any ideas on how I can improve? I really want to stop drawing this way!

[burnt kayak]

one thing that might help u is literally tracing over the faces! take your portrait, draw on all the guidelines you would if you freehanded it, and just trace your photo reference. then, only using what you traced, try recreating the face freehand

tracing over faces in general is very helpful if you want to learn how they look

just make sure you know what’s actually going on though! simply drawing the outlines of something like the eye won’t help— understanding that the eyelids wrap around the eyeball will create a more 3d look rather than if you simply draw a football shape for the eye

hold on i’m gonna steal one of your refs as an example

i was kinda lazy here so it’s not as refined as i’d normally make it, but here it is for your consideration!

the only thing i didn’t do was redraw it after because like i said, i’m lazy 😭

there’s also a portrait study group* going on rn! idk if you’re participating in it already or not, but taking a look might be helpful since there will be people better than i am who can help :)

hopefully this all made sense!

[sudden vale]

Thanks;
I'm at a pretty low skill level. Will I still be able to participate?

[burnt kayak]

ofc you can! study groups are open to everyone

[dire scroll]

Hope this helps!

This is just pointing out things to improve but what u have is already rly good 🙂

[sudden vale]

Thanks, it does show me a few things i'm doing wrong.