Faces: Simple as Circles

Good day, readers!

So, I figure that before I teach you to draw individual parts of a face, I should start with the face itself - so you have somewhere to put everything.



I drew this in about two minutes...

There is a small problem with this, though. As I have been drawing for.. about eight years now, I can draw a face like it's nothing, it's just becomes kind of natural after a while. Don't worry, if you keep up with it, it will be natural for you too!



Anyway, I figure that explaining to you how I  draw faces exactly won't be of much help to you. Why? Because it would basically be "You draw a line this way, then a curvy line this way, then another line and then it's a face!", and your response would be "... Wat?". You would likely end up with a wiggly blob that had a slight, warped appearance of a face.

So, instead, I will be taking old techniques that I used to help teach myself, along with a really helpful technique I picked up from a friend a year or two ago. I don't use it anymore unless I'm really stressing about it, but it is a great technique.

And this technique is, to simply start with... a circle. So draw a circle on your paper - make it pretty big, as you want room for details. It does not have to be perfect, as you can see from my beautifully scribbly lines.

Note: This is a sketch. For now, make sure you're drawing as light as you can, or you'll be screwed over later.

Once you have your circle - if this takes you more than 10 seconds to draw, you're over-thinking it - you can move on to the trickier part. It's a little hard to describe, so just make sure you're comparing what I write to what I drew. Bring two lines down from either side of the circle. Go down in an almost straight line. It's tricky to explain this, as if you make it to directly downwards it could look a little blocky, so try and turn it inwards a tiny bit. Go down just a few centimetres like this. Make sure both lines are about even (you can adjust this later too, that's why we draw lightly!), then angle the lines again and bring them together into the chin.

Drawing guidelines, like above, will also be very helpful. One down the middle, one across the middle, one a quarter way from the bottom (of the circle) and one at the bottom of the circle.

Next, start sketching in the outlines of the facial features, using the lines to aid you in keeping everything symmetrical. Symmetry takes a long time to really master, I still have many problems with it.

Everything there is pretty well explained by my drawings. A couple things I will specify though, are that the ears should go from (approximately) the top of the eyes to the bottom of the nose. Depending on how you've proportioned, following this exactly may make the ears look really big, so adjust as you feel is needed. As for the lips, they go about half way between the nose and the chin.

Once you've vaguely placed everything, you can erase the lines! If you like you can leave them for a while, but I find them messy and distracting.

 

And suddenly, it's starting to look like a face! The rest of the process is kind of stylistic and self-explanatory. I will be going over specific features in future posts!

 

If you have any questions, comments, etc. Just let me know!

 

 

 

P.S., After some consideration, I think I'm going to do my following tutorials digitally. Although I didn't want to do this as I prefer traditional art, it will be be easier to see.