Prove yourself as the best artist for the week

Hello creative friends on Steemit.

Hope you all are doing okay and everything is fine. I am doing great by the grace of God, and it's another exciting week filled with artistic energy and inspiration. The moment I saw the contest “Prove Yourself as the Best Artist This Week”, organised by @dequeen, I knew I had to participate because every time this challenge appears, it gives me a chance to test my limits and improve my artistic techniques. For this week’s entry, I decided to create a realistic pencil portrait of a man, an artwork that required patience, focus, and deep attention to detail. Here's how I created this piece.

Drawing items

• A4 paper

• mechanical pencil

• graphite pencil

• 6B and 8B pencils

• charcoal pencil

• eraser

• sharpener

• black pen.

Step-by-Step creation.

Step 1

First I wrote my username and date at the top of my paper, then I began sketching the eyes. I consider the eyes to be the most expressive feature in a portrait, so I carefully added shadows and highlights to give them life and emotion.

Step 2

Next I then added details to the eyes, and I also drew the nose; after that I outlined the head structure lightly using an HB pencil. I carefully studied the proportions of the face, ensuring that every feature aligned perfectly to maintain balance and realism.

Step 3

Once the outline was complete, shading the beard and face followed next. This stage demanded patience because I had to pay close attention to how the light hit each side of the face. The beard, however, needed rougher strokes to capture its texture, so I combined both light and dark pencil tones for depth.

Step 4

Next, I moved to the hair. This part demanded patience and precision. I drew it strand by strand, gradually layering tones with 4B and 6B pencils to create realistic texture and volume while maintaining the natural shadows that define the structure of the face.

Step 5

At this step, I then lightly sketched the suit which he wore. The suit was shaded using darker grades of graphite (6B–8B) to contrast the lighter areas of the face and hair.

Step 6

Finally, I cleaned up the drawing by erasing stray marks and enhancing the highlights and added more details where necessary, especially on the face and hair, to give the portrait a polished finish. Then below is my final result.

A selfie of me and my drawing

My video