I’m sure many of you think that idea on this how to draw a portrait must be so complicated and possibly too difficult to teach for children. You may be surprised then to know, that kids are drawing a portrait in a very creative and spontaneous way. They are not feeling scared to make mistakes! How refreshing is that? They need just a little bit of instructions on the shape of the head and proportion of the face before they are able to position the eyes, nose, and lips in the right places. They can identify colours quite well and once you point out some details, then the kids are able to identify the rest. Since drawing portraits class goes on for two sessions we used soft pastels to make the first portrait and during the second one we created a portrait of a cartoon character from the movie “The Book Of Life“.

I was really impressed to see that my students decided to pick one of the most complicated portraits with lots of details and they really managed to accomplish it. The sketch was marvellous on its own but we obviously loved the colours of the original character so we worked on it really hard and you can see one of the completed artworks with its seven year old illustrator. Isn’t that amazing? This little girl gave her all. She was fantastic adding all of the lines and colours and double checking if she was getting it right compared to the original. Then she used her knowledge on the colour theory and mixed it all up in the right proportions to be as truthful as possible. If you thought that kids drawing a portrait will be a very difficult thing to do you are probably very surprised now.

Try to guide your kids in to drawing a portrait and believe me you can talk them through it see what amazing pictures they can create.

If you find it difficult you can always come for a visit to Art Studio Guelph. We offer drop-in classes too so you can get to try our art classes without a long-term commitment.