Welcome!  I am J.R. Dunster, and I have been drawing portraits for a long time.  I have sold many of my portraits to collectors over the years, and I guess I can consider myself a competent portrait artist.  (To the left of this text is a small example of one of my colored pencil portraits.)

I wanted to create this page to help "newbie" portrait artists.  I remember all too painfully my teen years, when I first started to get really serious about portraits.  I was so lost, had no encouragement, and didn't know where to start.  I needed inspiration, some guidance, and some basic advice on materials to use, things to strive for and to avoid, and basic portrait tips.  I hope to supply a little bit of what I feel would be helpful in this page.  

This page is a "mirror site" of an old Geocities page I wrote on drawing portraits back in 1998 or 1999. I hadn't updated the Geocities site in so long, so I've decided to transfer it over here to its new home on Portrait-Artist.org. That little Geocities site was the "pre-Portrait-Artist.org." I got so many good ideas and great feedback from it, that I decided to create a whole website about drawing portraits. Which is now Portrait-Artist.org!

Another example of my work:

I used Prismacolor Colored Pencils on colored paper to create this portrait.  I drew a preliminary sketch on tracing paper. (No, I did not trace the drawing from a photograph!   I just drew a light sketch on the tracing paper.)   I then transferred it onto the dark colored paper.  (I sometimes draw directly onto the colored paper, but when I am fussing with a likeness, I find it better to work it all out on some tracing paper first.) 

The way I do this technique is that I do the tracing paper drawing.   I then rub the back of this tracing paper sketch thoroughly with flesh-colored Prismacolor colored pencil.   This makes it a sort of "carbon paper".  I then trace firmly with a hard pencil while the tracing paper is placed over the colored paper.   This makes a vague outline impression of the portrait onto the colored paper (in this instance, brown Canson paper.)  I then work to render and perfect the portrait on the colored paper from there.

 

e-mail Much thanks to B. Thompson for his design of my email graphic!

StudyWeb Check out my little Portrait Art Tutorial on my main GeoCities site. It was awarded the StudyWeb Academic Excellence Award! (I'm very proud of that!

This page originally created in: EditPad.   The Best Postcardware Text Editor in the World!

This page has also been maintained and edited with:   HomeSite 4.5, BBEdit, and now is edited with Dreamweaver.

Another button by B. Thompson -
he loves to tease me because I love to use Photoshop on my new Mac!

Copyright © J.R. Dunster 2001 - 2005. All Rights Reserved.   

[Getting Started]  [Specific Help]  [Portrait Sketchbook]  [Some Don'ts]  [Portrait Tips]  [Drawing Profiles]  [Digital Drawings]

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