How to Draw a Picasso Portrait!

Artists of Any Age Can Make This Cool Art!

About the Artist: Pablo Picasso

If you love art, you've probably heard of Pablo Picasso before! Pablo Picasso is a famous Spanish artist who live d from 1881 to 1973 and loved painting, sculpting, writing, and more. He's best known using the art style cubism, which is when a painting is made up of a bunch of geometric shapes rather than looking super realistic. It combines a lot of different perspectives in the painting. You'll see that all of the characteristics of the face in the portrait are asymmetrical, which means it's not symmetrical, or not balanced. He's one of the most famous abstract painters of his time. Today, we're going to learn to draw in Pablo Picasso's cubist style to draw a portrait!

What You'll Need

- One piece of white paper

- Black Sharpie

- Colored pencils

You may have drawn faces before, but this face is going to be a little different! We're not going to start with an oval in the middle of our paper to compose the face - we're just going to dive right in.

Step 1: Draw the Eyes

First, we're going to start with one eye. Draw one rainbow curve and under that, draw a smile curve, connecting the two. Eyes are actually shaped like a football, or like a lemon. Then, put a circle inside that touches the top and bottom of the eye. You can also add a star shape inside because sometimes Picasso used stars instead of drawing pupils!

The second eye is going to be a little different. Let's go to the left and a little bit up, and draw a sideways eye. To draw that, draw a sideways curved "V". Then, draw a curve connecting the two, that looks like the eye. You can draw a circle inside if you want, and a pupil too! Then, give both of your eyes a few eyelashes on the top.

Finally, let's add eyebrows. To draw eyebrows, you'll draw two rainbow curves that connect on the ends. Then, add lines inside to represent the eyebrow hair.

Step 2: Draw the Nose

Sometimes, Picasso put the nose on the side or on the middle of the face. We're going to draw a very simple nose with a geometric shape, sort of like the number 7 but flipped upside down. Then, we'll draw the nostrils. They look like a sideways 8, or an infinity sign (∞) tilted downward.

Step 3: Draw the Face

Now starting at the top of your nose, draw a curve around the eyes. This will be your subject's forehead! Then, draw a short line underneath the nose.

Now, let's add some lips. To draw lips, start with a bird shape and connect the two sides with a smile curve under it. Then, add one more crazy curve under it so that we have top and bottom lips. Then, draw a big curve that starts on the side of your lips and goes under the mouth. This is your subject's chin.

Then, draw an ear on the side opposite of your nose. We're going to make our ear look like the number 3 (or, if you drew your nose on the right side of your face, make a backwards 3 on the left). Then, double it by adding a little bit of a smaller 3 on the inside of the ear, and a little bump on the inside.

Finally, draw a curve that connects your chin to your ear. Under your chin, add one long line toward the bottom of the page. Then, go to the side and add another line that starts at your cheek and goes down parallel to the neck line.

Step 4: Add a Hat!

A lot of Pablo Picasso's subjects wore hats, so let's add one to our drawing! Start with the side of the ear and draw a curve that goes all the way up and over the forehead, and connects on the other side of the head. Then, double that line and go all the way around back so that you have a brim. Then, add the top part of the hat. If you want to draw a different style hat, that's okay too! This is your art, so you get to pick what goes in your drawing.

OPTIONAL: Pablo Picasso also loved adding flowers to the hats of his subjects. If you want, you can add a flower too. Make it extra geometric-shaped to look like Picasso's style.

Step 5: Add Some Hair

Remember, this is your drawing, so you can draw whatever hair style you want. If you want to follow our instructions, this is how we draw our hair. First, we're going to outline our hair with some bangs and add some long curves to break the bangs up into shapes.

Now, we're going to add long hair. Add some curvy lines that come down for her hair. Then, add her shoulders and a U curve under her neck to represent her collar. You could also add jewelry, like a necklace, if you want!

Step 6: Color!

Grab your favorite colored pencils, markers, crayons, or whatever you want to color in your portrait! Make sure each shape is a different color or shades of colors. You can also add shading in your shapes if you want to, too!