Two Drawings In One

Two Drawings In One

Here's an interesting way to combine two pencil portraits in one. It's a combination of one drawing in the foreground and one drawing in the background.

If you are computer savy and have a scanner, you can use your graphics program to create a reference photo to work from. This will be helpful if you are using the grid technique.

Using your computer's graphics program, scan and resize the two original photos that you will be working from, so that one is a little smaller than the other. Play around with them. Put the larger one in the background and the smaller one in the foreground. Then reverse them, move the around until you think they look best.

The way I do this is to scan a blank piece of white paper. I then bring this blank paper up in my graphics program. Cut and paste the two reference photos onto the blank paper. From here you can move them around until you get them the way you want to draw them. Then save what you just created. Crop it if you have to then print it. Now you have a nice neat reference photo to work from.

If you don't have a scanner or don't know how to use the computer to do all this, place the first photo in the grid and draw the outline. Next, put the second photo in the grid and draw the outline for that one. Finish your drawing as usuual from here.

These "double drawings" work well for almost any subject. Draw a dog from the front and from the side in the same portrait. If you are drawing a person, do the same thing.

I have done some celebrity portraits of super heroes with their secret identity added to the portrait.

Also movie stars and their most famous role in the same pencil portrait.

This kind of pencil drawing is fun to do and adds a lot of interest to the portrait.

A double portrait makes a great gift for a loved one or friend too.