This paper presents the creation of a robot capable of real-time drawing artistic portraits and signature. The application is based on the successful integration of multidisciplinary techniques including face detection, image processing, face image and characters segmentation, space coordinates transformation, trajectory planning, and robot arm motion control. The autonomous human face portrait is conducted by on a two-armed and twin-wheeled robot with a CCD camera on the head. A large number of real-time portrait experiments show that when the face of the people is properly illuminated, the robot can consistently use its 6-DOF arm to draw a face portrait consisting of smooth line segments and sign its name on the portrait.