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2 - When drawing a portrait don't concentrate too much on a likeness, just concentrate on structure and the form of the face and a likeness will come.
4 - Unless your drawing or painting a full portrait it is best to leave the background simple or with no background at all as in a head and shoulders portrait. 5 - If your drawing or painting a dog remember that the dog's nose protrudes more than the rest of the face so use your strongest darks, lights and colours there to bring it out more than the rest of the dog's face to achieve depth. See a Dog video excerpt
7 - When drawing or painting a head and shoulders portrait make features slightly darker than the rest of the portrait, after all these are the most important parts of the portrait. 8 - To make eyes liquid looking put the main highlights in and then put a secondary highlight in but a bit fainter just at the top of the bottom lid of the eye 9 - To put life and vitality into a drawing or painting one quick deft stroke can and will make all the difference. 10 - Always make dark people cooler and a shade lighter than what they look otherwise they can look too brown and dark. See video excerpt 11 - Generally shadows are cool so exaggerate this blueness to make the features stand out more but on occasion shadows are warm (Reds) don't exaggerate warm shadows otherwise they wont look like shadows. 12 - Have you ever seen an head and shoulders portrait where the head looks too big for the shoulders this is because you haven't drawn the shoulders wide enough, this is a common mistake, make sure the proportions are correct. 13 - If you are drawing or painting a threesome make sure that the two outside people are turning slightly inward towards the central person if possible.
15 - When you first draw in a light basic drawing and then you draw your finished drawing over the top of this try not to make the finished drawing or painting too mechanical (keeping to the basic lines you first drew in). Always think to put life into a drawing by not being afraid to go outside the boundaries of your first basic lines.
18 - If there is texture in your drawing or painting always place it at the centre of interest and only have a little bit of texture there, having it all over your picture isn't very artistic and the viewer wont know where to look first. See a video excerpt 19 - When drawing or painting a portrait first look at the whole head and say to yourself is it a squarish looking head, is it more rounder or oval, use this same technique with the features of the face, is the eye shape more oval, or squarish looking, you will get a better likeness this way. 20 - Use a putty rubber to pull out highlights in the eyes or leave white paper for the highlights.
22 - Try drawing or painting upside down, no not you silly! but the picture you are drawing or painting, it forces you to concentrate on the picture without distracting details....it might surprise you.
24 - Follow the form in you work, if you are drawing or painting a person and the form of the hair seems to curve to the left follow this with your pencil strokes, if it curls or goes straight follow it with your pencil strokes. See a video excerpt 25 - Set yourself a time limit, say two minutes to draw a face this can help you loosen up. If you would like to comment on any of these tips
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1 - When drawing or painting two people in a portrait always have one person higher than the other and when drawing three people always have the person in the middle a little higher or lower than the two outer portraits instead have having them all in a row.
3 - The best angle for a portrait is a three quarter view, that is in between a profile (side view) and a straight on view.
6 - When you are painting and you cant make out the overhaul colour of something cut 
14 - Use the side of the pencil or pastel to lay in broad areas of tone. see a video excerpt 
16 - Always have a good light source for your portrait, a light that is coming from above and from either the left or right produces a powerful light source and a good portrait effect.
17 - Always paint with contrasting warm and cool colours placed against each other if possible.
21 - Turn your back to the portrait you are drawing and holding a mirror in front of you see your portrait through the mirror, you can often see structural mistakes better this way.
23 - Try drawing a grid, although I'm not in favour of using grids some people are quite successful with them. Divide the picture you are drawing or painting into equal squares and transfer this to your paper or canvas you can then concentrate on copying from the photograph one square at a time. Although you can get your drawing or painting more accurate this way (Likeness etc) you lose out in putting vitality, character and freedom into your portrait.
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