This is the fifth tutorial in a series of portrait sketching tutorials for complete beginners. You can read the previous tutorials here:

If you haven't read the previous tutorials I highly encourage you to go through them because the rest of the tutorials will be the continuation of the past tutorials.

In this tutorial I will teach you to shade the nose. Many people think that drawing the nose is just shading around the outline and leave it at that. That is partly true. To draw a realistic nose, we have to shade around the nose AND erase the outline. We also need to include the highlighted areas.

You will learn to make contrast on this tutorial. Always refer to your reference image whenever you shade any part of the portrait. Compare the the skin tones and decide where you want to add darker tones or lighter tones based on the reference image. You do not want your portrait to appear unrealistic and flat.

I used 3B pencil throughout this tutorial. I also labeled the parts that we need to shade for easy reference. I will use these labels (a, b, c etc) to refer to those parts so that it is easier to explain and for you to understand.

So let's begin!

Shading the Nose

Step 1

Erase the grid lines around the nose BUT leave the lines inside the nose.

Step 2

Draw hatching lines on part a and draw a curve line on part b.

Step 3

I am sorry that mislabeled the 2 parts. Part a should be part b, and vice versa. Continue to draw hatching lines on part b. Use your art eraser to erase the curve line on part a. It doesn't really matter if you can't erase it totally. A faint line is still acceptable as long as it not too obvious.

Step 4

Draw hatching lines on part a and continue until part b. Darken the nostril on part c.

Step 5

Darken the curve line on part a and draw hatching lines on part b.

Step 6

Continue to darken the area on the curve line up to part a. Darken the area around the nostril on part b and continue to part c. Darken the area on part d.

Step 7

Continue to darken the area around part a until part b.

Step 8

Shade the medial cleft on part a and draw hatching lines on part b.

Step 9

Draw a curve line on part a. Draw hatching lines on part b until part c.

Step 10

Draw hatching lines on part a and darken the nostril on part b.

Step 11

Continue to draw more hatching lines on part a. Draw hatching lines on part b and draw cross hatching lines on part c.

Step 12

Use your art eraser to erase the curve line. It doesn't really matter if you can't erase it totally. A faint line is still acceptable as long as it not too obvious.

Step 13

Draw hatching lines on part a. Darken the curve line on part b.

Step 14

Erase the grid lines.

Step 15

Continue to draw more hatching lines on part a.

Step 16

Add more hatching lines along the nose bridge and the tip of the nose (part a).

Step 17

Draw straight lines to shade the rest of the nose on part a.

Step 18

Darken the areas on part a.

Step 19

Darken the areas on part a.

Step 20

Use your art eraser to create highlight on areas on part a.

Step 21

...and your nose should look like this!

So that's it for tutorial part 5. Is it too hard or does it help you to draw better? Please leave your comments below! Thank you.

Note: In the next tutorial we will learn to shade the mouth.

Stay tuned!

NOTE: I have thought long and hard about this. To encourage people to learn, I would like to offer some reward in the form of SBD to 3 people who could sketch the best portraits by the end of this tutorial series. I haven't decided on how much the reward will be though. I am thinking of giving SBD3 to the best portrait, SBD2 to the second one and SBD1 to the third. I know it's not much but I am just a lowly minnow who doesn't earn much yet, unless we have some sponsors or the response is encouraging.

So here are the rules:

Upvote and resteem this post
Draw a portrait exactly the way I taught it in this tutorial series (there will be several posts covering different facial features)
Make a post for your entry (add pencilportraitnoob in the tags). Make sure you spell it correctly.
At the end of this tutorial series, please link to your post in the comments so that I could find your entry

Is this too complicated? If you are not clear, maybe you can leave me a comment.

Some of my pencil portrait posts on Steemit:

Jerry and Barbie - A Tribute to Meteor Garden On 16th Anniversary

Pencil Portrait of My Mother - Madam Veronica G. Bedindang

Pencil Portrait of My Husband and Son

Pencil Portrait: Luciana Zogbi - A Brazilian Lebanese Beauty

Pencil Portrait: Sabina Altynbekova - The Living Anime-Girl