When I got back to drawing two years ago, my portrait drawings lacked structure, depth, and art style, and getting them to look somewhat believable was a long and often frustrating process.

Recently, I have been practicing a lot and just exploring different exercises to improve my portrait drawing skills, and in this video, I share 6 of my favorite exercises that have improved my ability to draw consistently better faces as a beginner over the last couple of years.

🕗 Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:59 Exercise 1: Drawing sculptures
02:59 Exercise 2: The Bargue method
05:00 Exercise 3: Skull practice
05:49 Exercise 4: The Loomis head
07:03 Exercise 5: The Bridgman head cube
08:10 Exercise 6: Master studies

📂 Free resources that can help you learn and practice these portrait drawing exercises:

• My favorite sculpture references on Pinterest   / sculpture-drawing-references  
• Digital scans of the Bargue plates that are in public domain https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins...
• Proko’s tutorial on the Loomis Method    • Quickly Draw Heads with the Loomis Me...  
• Loish’s stylization exercise that shows how you can be more intentional with your drawing style    • Stylization Exercise with Loish (LIVE...  
• Stuff I have learned so far in my journey to get better at drawing faces shared on my tiny art blog https://bingedrawing.com/

✎📖 Books and art supplies I own (Affiliate Links):

• Drawing the Head and Hands by Andrew Loomis https://amzn.to/3XOC8Ef
• Charles Bargue and Jean-Leon Gerome: Drawing Course https://amzn.to/4eRycbY
• Constructive Anatomy by George Bridgman https://amzn.to/3Lb0ald
• Miniature skull https://amzn.to/3RNXPAb
• Faber Castell Series 9000 Pencils https://amzn.to/3RVnKGh
• Blackwing Pencils https://amzn.to/3LaHcLq



Guys, this happens to be my second video on Youtube and I would love to hear your feedback so I can improve my next video! And please do consider liking this video and subscribing to my channel so the algorithm gods are kind to me!

Thanks so much for your interest and support! 💌