Celebrity Portrait: William Dafoe

Using a favourite photograph, create your own portrait masterpiece.

- Chantel Rose Smith

MATERIALS

• Good quality drawing paper such as Chanson Drawing paper 220gsm “C” à grain. This paper is a fine tooth white paper for drawing in pencil, charcoal, chalk, ink wash and poster colour. For this drawing I have used an A3 sheet.

• Tracing paper or a lightbox. If you are using tracing paper instead of a lightbox you will also need a colored pencil.

• Good quality graphite pencils that will give your drawing a smooth and finally textured finished. You will need a hard pencil, either an H or 2H, for drawing up the portraits outline and a range of softer pencils including 2B, 3B, 4B and 5B for adding tone to the portrait. .

• A good quality sharpener is also needed; your pencils should always be kept sharp with a fine point. Alternatively you could use a Stanley or craft knife and shave of the wood around the graphite pencil, this will take a while longer but the pencil will stay sharper for a longer period of time.