The first challenge you will face with any portrait commission is acquiring a suitable subject photograph from your customer.This subject could be a person, a pet, or a building.

Now is the time to be a little bit assertive. You should always insist on certain minimum requirements regarding the quality of the photograph. Otherwise, you are certain to fail in your pencil portrait drawing effort.

Naturally, the better the quality of the photograph the better chance you have of producing an excellent portrait. Although most customers understand this, you would be astounded to see how many awful pictures I have received.

There are many reasons for this. For example, some customers only have a picture taken with a throw-away camera or have only an old fuzzy wedding picture of their parents. This will not do, unless there is a clear understanding with your customer prior to starting the drawing.

From experience, I can tell you that if the photograph is bad, i.e., insufficiently resolved, you are doomed to failure and you will not be able to produce a good likeness. Consequently, you will have an unhappy customer who will often question your skills instead of the quality of their picture. To avoid such situations, here are a few guidelines. 

* If your customer has a digital photograph, insist on .jpg format and a resolution of at least 300 dpi (dots per inch).

* When the picture is still to be taken, insist on the use of a 5 mega-pixel digital camera or higher and make sure your customer sends you the unaltered version (no cropping or resizing) of the photo.

* If the customer only has a paper photo (often an old one) ask them, if possible, to scan it into their computer and email it to you first. This will give you the opportunity to judge the quality of the photo before they snail mail you the original. Here again, you must insist on an acceptably high resolution.

Here are a few more suggestions you may want to convey to your customer:

* For paper photographs, insist on a minimum head size of 2.5 to 3.5 inches, measured from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin. Smaller sizes are much harder to work with.

* Tell your customer to avoid posed subjects with unnaturally large smiles. In fact, casual unsmiling poses often make for more convincing portraits.
 
* If the picture is still to be taken, advise your customer not to use the flash. The flash tends to do away with the natural shadows which are very important in a pencil portrait drawing. Also, lighting coming from the side from one light source is a nice bonus.

* If possible, have your customer send you several photos of the subject, including some close-ups. This will give you a much better idea of the unique qualities and personality of the subject. It also will reveal many of the small details that are often crucial in achieving a good likeness of the subject.

* For group portraits, insist not only on a group photo but also on separate photos of each of the subjects. This will allow you to produce a more pleasing montage or collage of the group.
* If all else fails and if possible, take the subject photographs yourself.

Of course, in practice, we often may have to settle with less. And you actually can often do with less. However, what you cannot do without is acceptably high resolution. From experience, I can tell you that there is no way around this. A fuzzy photograph will not do unless your customer wants a fuzzy image on purpose and is only interested in the artistic qualities of the rendering and not in a good likeness.

So, with a suitable photograph in hand we are now ready to start the actual drawing without having sabotaged our effort from the get go.