Portrait Drawing by Joanna Henly

Pocket Art: Portrait Drawing by Joanna Henly ISBN-13: 9781631594694 Paperback: 112 pages Publisher: Rockport Publishing Released: April 24, 2018

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
This lively, graphic approach to explaining concepts will have you looking and learning with step by step illustrations and expert tips straight from London-based artist "Miss Led" (aka Joanna Henly). Henly begins by guiding you through your initial set up, then moves on to "Understanding the Face". She takes you through capturing facial features and expressions and rendering of hair and skin. This compact 112-page book is just right for carrying in a backpack or pocket for when you’re learning on the go.


My Review:
Portrait Drawing provides tips on how to draw simple portraits of people using pencils. The author briefly described the basics of using a pencil to draw (like how to hold the pencil and the types of marks you can make). Then she showed how to draw a general face/head oval and place guidelines on it to help put the facial features in the correct spots. She then focused on drawing each facial feature at various angles and included male/female and age differences. She also provided sketches and some tips for creating expressions, skin tones, and different types of hair.

The book was mainly illustrations showing how to block in the face and features from various viewing angles plus a number of the author's finished portraits. Overall, I'd recommend this book to artists who like examples and tips on creating portraits at unusual angles, as that seemed to be the strong point of this book.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Google Preview.