My top tips for drawing kids ✏️

Drawing children is sometimes daunting, and it’s very very different to drawing adults.

Adults have texture to their faces, but children don’t. The key to creating realistic children in pencil, is you have to recreate that smooth, seamless gradient on their skin.

The technique

To do this, you need to use very light pressure, and lots and lots of layers. Overlapping colour is a real key when drawing kids. We want no harsh lines and lots of layering colours over the top of each other to create a super smooth transition. It’s important that the shapes you use are very loose, and you don’t have harsh lines. Draw in little circles, not in a scratchy motion.

When drawing children, I use Pastelmat and a heat mat. The extra heat really helps those colours blend without lines.

Proportions

If you’re used to drawing adults, sometimes the proportions of a child’s face can be off putting. Children have larger eyes set in a smaller face, with much larger heads. It’s important to take that extra time with an outline, and make sure it’s spot on, as it’s easy to naturally change the proportions of a child’s face to something more familiar.

Penny - done with Derwent Lightfast on Pastlemat.

Even thought there is harsh lighting in her face, the transition from light to dark is still smooth and steady, which gives the impression that she has soft, smooth skin. There are no harsh colours or harsh lines, I’ve tried to keep it all full of overlapped areas. There are no areas which are just one colour.

Expression

This is usually the most difficult part of a child’s portrait, as they’re normally pulling a face, or have a cheeky grin etc. I’d start with the expression and face first. Then if you really don’t like it, you can restart without losing lots of other hard work. Try not to alter the expression into something that ‘looks better’ - this is so easy to do, but you have to trust the process and eventually, you’ll nail that awkward face.

Baby Wren - done on Pastelmat with Derwent Lightfast and Caran D’Ache Luminance.

Wren is just a few months old here, and is pulling a face. At first, I wondered how to recreate her mouth, as in outline form, it looked weird. But I kept going, and drew what I saw in the photo. To make sure I didn’t alter it, I worked upside down for that area, which is a great way to make sure that you don’t subconsciously change tricky parts of a portrait.

This has been a short post, but hopefully, a couple of tips will help you in your own endeavours when drawing children.

The most important thing is keep everything smooth. We want no harsh lines!