How to Refine a Traced Sketch Freehand

Ok. You just got done tracing an image for your portrait painting.

Now what? Begin painting? Not so fast! 🙂 In this video, I’ll show you how I’m refining the traced image, freehand, to make it ready to paint upon.

In this video, I’m going to work on this sketch of Isaiah or Hezekiah.

This is for the book of Isaiah by Russell Stendal and it’s an illustration based off this image here of a man in intercessory prayer. And originally, I did a video showing the tracing process, asking whether it’s ok to trace. And I think I answered that question, that it is—as long as you do freehand sketching and work with grids. But especially as you work with freehand sketching, which will help you to improve as an artist.

Now, I’m going to work in this sketch to show you the process of tightening up a sketch done by tracing initally and the tracing process does leave you with a lot of work left to be done. So, I’m going to show you how I’m going to add additional shading in detail and then have a sketch that I can paint on top of.

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Thank you so much for reading this tutorial and watching the video. That means a lot to me. I hope you find it very helpful in your portrait painting!