This weekend is my son’s graduation from high school, and I wanted to give him a hand-drawn portrait in a frame where his friends could all sign their names and congratulate him.

My last attempt and drawing his portrait started with a bad picture. This time I used a more recent photo taken myself on my iPhone. I made sure to get a picture that had a lot more facial details to work with.

I started out by measuring a few things. I compared the width to the height of his head. I used an eyeball width to place the eyes, nose and mouth. Here’s what that looked like:

With my measured features in place, I felt confident about getting a good likeness.

I started to plug in the features. I noted the curve of his eyes and the subtle, upward bow of his lower, right eyelid. I noticed that his teeth overlapped his lower lip when he smiled, and I spent a good deal of time reworking his teeth to get them just right. (I even started to feel a little guilty about not putting him in braces yet.)

As I worked over the elements I started to feel a bit uneasy. It just didn’t look like him. I questioned my proportions and checked and checked them again. They all lined up as I expected them too.

At this point I encouraged myself to just trust in the process. Keep measuring. Focus on getting each part right and it will grow closer and closer to a good resemblance.

I kept at it until I had the mouth, eyes, nose and ears all in the right place and each looking like the real parts.

It still didn’t feel right.

I started to think that his head was too wide. I took some more measurements. Sure enough, the head I had drawn was too wide for its height. I needed to fix that.

I fixed it by making it taller. I added some room both to the top of his head and the bottom. And it worked!

It’s amazing how the shape and proportions of our head can contribute so much to our recognizability.

I’m glad I stuck with this and trusted in the process. It took a good couple of hours, but I eventually got his head shaped right and his infectious smile captured for all to see at his graduation party tomorrow!