A portrait essay presents a personality to the readers. It usually focuses on the aspects of life that are the most exciting or unique.
It comprises two types of papers: a self-portrait essay and a portrait of another person. This article explains how to write these assignments with utmost efficiency. You will find the best tips, ideas, and samples to describe yourself or someone else as precisely as possible.
👧 Self-Portrait Essay
A self-portrait essay is a piece of writing that describes the author’s looks and personal qualities. It uses evocative images and characteristic details to show why this person stands out from the crowd. As a rule, it is a descriptive or reflective essay. Still, it can be argumentative if you want to contradict someone else’s opinion about you.
How to Write a Self-Portrait
Below you’ll find several ideas for a self-portrait essay. These are just general guidelines. If you need a creative and well-formulated topic, you are welcome to use our topic-generating tool.
- Start the introduction with an introduction. We are not talking about “Hi, my name is Cathy,” although this variant is also possible in some contexts. Tell about your family and where you live. Do not just list facts as if you are answering a questionnaire. Make up a background story.
- Imagine yourself a book character. How would you describe yourself if you wrote a book about your life? This approach can make your self-portrait essay more poetic and literary. Replace the epithets that can describe many people (straight nose, thin lips, high forehead) with metaphors (a nose as straight as an arrow, paper-thin lips, expansive forehead). It will make your essay more memorable.
- Speak about objects & stories. Appearance is only a tiny part of your personality. Your life consists of items you like, people you love, and stories you create. That’s what you readers will enjoy reading!
- Conclude with your hopes for the future. Do not reiterate what you said before, even if you cannot imagine anything new. Write how you would like to develop your skills or become a better professional in the future. Make your essay open-ended, as any human life is.
Self-Portrait Essay Example
Who am I? What kind of person am I? What do I like? What do I want to become? In this essay, I will describe my appearance and how it reflects my inner world.
Looking in the mirror, I see a slender but slightly skinny girl. I have an oval face, a small straight nose, and sparkling eyes. It is the eyes that make my friends and acquaintances look at my face. They are profound, although they add playfulness to my face. In cloudy weather, they acquire a dark steel shade. When it is sunny, they brighten up. In general, I have kind gray eyes. As my friends say, it seems that they “laugh.”
That’s what I am all about. I am kind, cheerful, moderately strict, and responsive. I have a high forehead, hidden behind curtain bangs, and beautiful thick eyebrows of the correct shape hidden under the bangs. But this is not a gift from nature. I had to work on the form of the eyebrows on my own.
My lips are not thin, but not full either. Behind them, there are snow-white teeth. The hair is straight, although I always wanted to have curls. It is wheat-colored and reaches the shoulders.
I am a purposeful person, so I always set tasks that I immediately try to accomplish. But I never stop in my development. I raise the bar even higher and confidently put the next goal. It is essential for me to be the best in everything, so I have to work harder. Most likely, this is my drawback, but this quality fuels me to keep on growing. I would like to become firm, successful, and self-confident.
👨‍🎨️ Descriptive Portrait Essay
A descriptive essay about a person is a genre that analyzes the individual features and human qualities of a given person. People have so many different sides that there is a broad array of possibilities in this genre. Write of someone you know well enough (to have sufficient material).
Essay About a Person: Ideas
Below you’ll find six great ideas for an essay about a person.
- Describe appearance. First impressions are the most lasting. Your readers will get your message better if you give them a “picture.” It will play the role of a whiteboard where you’ll attack all the other traits.
- Link appearance to personality traits. But looks are not everything. They are the top of the iceberg. Show your reader why you paid attention to those characteristics and which conclusions you made.
- Mention their manners. It is optional but quite exciting to track. We are not stable, and our manners reflect those emotional shifts. Describe how the person behaves in stressful situations.
- Spot the emotions they raise in you. This part will make a perfect conclusion. Share your feelings with the readers to build empathy.
- Balance between being concise and informative. Avoid overwhelming your reader with irrelevant details. If the described person is someone you know well, it may be challenging to point out what is worth mentioning and what is not.
- Learn how to describe from professionals. If you wish to learn how to write, you should read a lot. In particular, you should read works of the same genre. Write down the metaphors and epithets your favorite author uses in their character descriptions.
How to Write a Portrait
We have prepared for you a mini guide on how to write a portrait of a person. Just follow these 8 simple steps:
- Collect information about a person. It is crucial to write about a person you know well, like a close friend, a classmate, or a family member. Consider conducting an interview with this person or talking with other people who know this individual to gain more insights and observations.
- Create a thesis and an outline. Choose interesting details, anecdotes, unique features, or qualities of your chosen person that are worth describing in your essay. Organize all the information logically in an outline to make writing easier. Also, create a thesis statement, which must include the person you write about and your purpose for describing them.
- Start with a physical description. At this stage, you need to be as specific as possible. Try to describe not only the appearance of the person but add details about their smell, voice, etc.
- Describe the behavior. Focus on what makes this person unique — their laugh, a manner of talking, a way of moving, etc.
- Demonstrate your character’s reputation. To do so, show how your described person makes others feel, treats others, and contributes to the world.
- Show your character’s environment and belongings. A person’s environment and belongings can reveal much about their personality, interests, and values. So, include details about what things are important to your described individual and whether their environment looks tidy, cluttered, dirty, etc.
- Write about their manner of speech. Describe the person’s choice of words and intonation to reflect their education level, confidence or fear, and unique worldview.
- Conclude by summarizing unique qualities. In your last paragraph, summarize what makes your described person unique. Add a concluding sentence conveying the final impression they have made on you.
Descriptive Portrait Essay Example
My best friend is a person who deserves a separate book. She had a complicated but interesting life. She is the third child in a large family and wants to become a nurse. I will dedicate this essay to her features and personal qualities to show that you can be a good person despite anything.
Mary’s appearance is unremarkable and even plain. She is tall and plump, and her gestures are indecisive. The girl seems to be shy, but she becomes very confident when her family or values are harmed. One could see a strict line between her eyebrows. It marks her inner strength and decisiveness.
The look of her grey eyes is attentive and benevolent. It helps her win the interlocutor in an argument. By the way, communication skills are the strongest part of her character. She is open and cheerful but sometimes too impulsive.
The way she speaks and behaves comforts me, like a cold winter evening in front of a fireplace. She is kind and caring, and always does her best to make any interaction pleasurable. Still, when someone acts with hypocrisy, she prefers to break up with such a person. It is hard for Mary to give people a second chance. This feature has its drawbacks, but it also makes her friends’ circle tight and reliable.
Mary wants to become a nursery teacher because she loves children. At the moment, she is studying for that, and I am sure she will succeed. This girl has taught me that people can combine mutually exclusive features in themselves and remain to be nice friends and intelligent specialists.
We hope we’ve inspired you to write your portrait essay. If you have already written your text and want it to be read aloud, you are welcome to use our text-to-speech tool.
âť“ Portrait Essay FAQ
How to Write a Portrait Essay?
1. Make a list of the most remarkable facial features and character traits of the person in question. 2. Relate the above to their character. 3. Group your findings into categories. 4. Dedicate one main body paragraph to each category.
How to Start a Portrait Essay?
Any essay should start with background information. In the case of a portrait essay, you could mention how you got to know the person or what your first impression was. Or, you can give general information about their family and work. Finish your introduction with a thesis statement, informing the reader of the purpose of your writing.
How to Write a Self-portrait Essay?
1. Sit in front of the mirror and think about which of your features differ you from other people. 2. Write the main body, dedicating each paragraph to a different aspect of your appearance. 3. Write the introduction about what kind of person you are and how you came to the place where you are now. 4. Write the conclusion about your future intentions.
How Do You Write a Character Portrait Essay?
1. Carefully read all the author’s descriptions of the character. 2. Link them to the plot as most characters reveal themselves gradually. 3. Think what impressed you the most about the character. 4. Write your opinion using the image the author created and your own imagination.