Graphite Pencil Drawing Tutorial: Female Nose

Here is a female nose to go along with the female eye tutorial I did. This tutorial demonstrates how I render noses as realistically as I can, using mostly direct application of graphite. I hope you will find the following images and descriptions informative and helpful as a guide in drawing noses. Many thanks to Toni-Marie Hudson for the use of her picture as reference for this tutorial.
Step 1: Here is the outline on 8.2 x 10.1 cm (3.25″ x 4″) Canson paper. The highlights have also been lightly indicated.

Step 2:  I’ve used a Chinese brush to apply the initial 2 or 3 layers of graphite powder. This brush produces a smoother effect than the soft brush I used in the eye tutorial. I applied the graphite powder in very light layers, adding more as needed. This is the base tone and it helps make additional layers of graphite tone smoother.

Step 3: I began using a small soft brush for the edges and for the darker areas.

Step 4:  Taking the kneaded eraser, I lightly and carefully, tap some of the tones off the highlights on the bridge of the nose, the ball of the nose, and below the nostrils. The Chinese brush was used to dull the highlights a little bit.

Step 5: Using a 0.5 mm 2B Dong-A mechanical pencil, I drew the nostrils. Less pressure was used as I came near the skin below the nostrils.

Step 6: Using a 0.5 mm HB Dong-A mechanical pencil, I began darkening the lower area of the nose. I also lessened the sharpness of the edges of the nostrils by gradually darkening the skin around them. To blend the tones, I used the small brush and a shop towel. It helps if the shop towel employed for blending and smoothening pencil marks is used. New, clean ones tend to pick up tone instead of spread them around.

Step 7: More skin tones using the HB mechanical pencil were added to the middle and upper parts of the nose. Most of the outlines have been smudged off and erased at this point.

Step 8: The skin on the sides of the nose and the nostril wings have been darkened. This created a more three-dimensional effect. For blending, I used the shop towel and the two brushes. A clean shop towel was used to lift excess graphite tone from the drawing. In this stage, I have also started making necessary corrections to capture the likeness of the subject.

Step 9: The tones were further blended. It’s almost finished.

Step 10: The final stage of the nose. For the finishing touches, the tools I used mainly were: a 0.5 mm 2B mechanical pencil with the tip sharpened using fine sandpaper — this was used for filling up light spots; a clean shop towel for lightening up graphite pencil tones; and a kneaded eraser for removing dark spots. Finalizing my “serious” works is usually the most difficult stage of the whole drawing process. It takes quite a long time to do as well.

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial of a female nose.
Happy drawing!