10 Free Websites for Portrait Reference Photos

Discover these free websites offering a range of portrait reference photos and take your illustrations to the next level

Studying the shapes, lighting, proportions, and details of real-life models is one of the best ways to practice your drawing skills. We can also rely on photographs, which is often a more convenient way of working with different subjects.

This is especially the case when it comes to portrait drawing. If you find good photo references, you’ll have a continuous stream of inspiration that allows you to practice drawing faces with a range of unusual features. We have compiled this list of the best reference photo websites for sourcing different faces so you can become a portrait artist.

LIFE Photo Archive

If you would like to focus on drawing notable faces from history, this archive created by LIFE magazine (and developed together with Google) offers up millions of photographs. It contains material from key moments in politics and entertainment, all of which have been shot using incredible lighting and interesting angles. This collection is limited to non-commercial use.

Portraits from Pexels

This popular stock photo site has a collection of more than 10 thousand portraits. You can search by categories, such as models, men, or women. Most of the portraits have an editorial feel, which you might find useful if you are planning to add color and texture to your drawings.

Mark Michaelson Collection

This is, without doubt, one of the most interesting websites on our list. Photographer Mark Michaelson has collated a collection of photos taken of people when they were arrested. You will find peculiar faces with often moving or surprising expressions.

Folio Montreal

This fashion website offers a great range of faces, featuring editorial portraits shot by well-known photographers, which feature hundreds of different models. This resource is great for drawing the same person making different expressions, or practicing front, profile, and three-quarter views.

This Person Does Not Exist

Some may find this website disturbing. Every face that appears on this website has been created by artificial intelligence that was developed by Nvidia researchers. You will likely find it surprising just how realistic each portrait seems, despite being generated by an algorithm. To see a new portrait, just refresh the page. You will also find information about how the site works.

Portraits on Freepik

This popular site of diverse design resources has a collection of more than 1.3 million portraits. You can select different categories to filter your results, such as gender or age. Be warned that a lot of the portraits available on this website are your typical stock-style images: in other words, the poses and expressions are not very natural-looking.

Compfight

This website is a Flickr search engine. When you enter search terms, you'll bring up all the images that have been uploaded with those tags. Searching for the word “portrait” returns more than 2.4 million results. Click on each image to discover its usage rights.

CC Search

This is a search engine for Creative Commons-licensed images. When you search for the term “portrait,” you will bring up more than 10,000 images. Each image includes information about the usage rights. You can filter your search results by source, aspect ratio, author, etc, using the menu on the left.

Portraits on Unsplash

The artistic styles of the work shared on this platform are what make it stand out. In Unsplash’s collection of portraits, which can be used in exchange for a credit, you’ll find interesting images and collections shot mainly in black and white by specialist portrait photographers. If you use the advanced filters, you can search the collection by age, gender, and much more.

Having explored a wealth of portrait references through these free resources, the next step in your artistic education awaits. Our portrait drawing courses at Domestika, crafted by experienced educators, offer an amazing learning experience in the art of portrait drawing.

You may also like:

– How to draw a face
– 5 Resources to Create Beautiful Photomontages
– Tutorials on how to start a portrait drawing