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JosephB222 â Tutorial - Face Sketches
Published: 2009-08-29 01:50:07 +0000 UTC; Views: 12995; Favourites: 198; Downloads: 624
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Click to view.This is just a quick tutorial of how I draw my faces. For the longest time I would just start drawing a pic cold, beginning with the eyes first working my way down the rest of the character's body hoping that the image I have in my head will fit the paper. For the past serveral years, when I got into inking my drawings, and especially since getting a light table, I've taken to mapping an outline of the character before I started filling in the details, which I think improved my drawings greatly. This is just a closer look at how I do faces. Very similiar to how most art books out there would show.
1. I start off with an oval shape for the head, drawing a couple of lines across to help me determine where the eyes and nose are going to be and whether the face will be looking down or up. I draw a line for the center of the face that will indicate if the face is looking straight ahead or to the side.
2. As I've said before, the eyes are the first things I draw, then the nose. From there I know where the mouth is going to be.
3. Then I do the cheeks, starting at the temples or the curve around the eye. Once I have that and the cheek, the rest of the face falls into place.
4. Unless the character I'm drawing is bald, I don't worry about drawing the entire scalp, because it'll be covered with hair anyway, unless the character has very short hair. This hair style is parted slightly to one side, so I have to remember that with each pose I do with this head.
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Comments: 47
nice !!
take a look at my work (timelapse)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvvqyvâŚ
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This is awesome, you help a desesperate girl ahah
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Thank you so much for posting this. It really helped me so much with trying to make a face. It is so stinking hard, but thanks to you and your beautiful talent, you helped me greatly!
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WOW thank you so much this is just what i needed i was hoping to try something new for my characters and the si amazing!
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Thanks for posting this. I am now good at this while drawing Jane Lane and any other random hot girls I draw thanks to this.
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This is a good tutorial.
I actually did and tried one of the sketches from this one:
[link]
and a different one (but it looks different) this morning at school before it started
Then again, this is a good tutorial you show us.
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Man this is a pretty helpfull tutorial.This may help me improve my skill.
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I'm glad I can help
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This is a great tutorial-very helpful! Its always good to see the stages they way you show them.
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I see how you do it, yet I will still be horrible at drawing no matter what.
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Thanks for the tips! 
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that is super awsome!! tnx for sharin this with us!
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I just thought to ask.
Do you do all this digitally, or are the initial sketches done old fashioned?
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Oh, I'm very old fashion. I draw and ink on paper then I scan them in. I use paint shop to clean up the lines a bit and to color.
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I have horrible times with hair! And noses. This is very helpful, thanks for posting!
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Glad I can help
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I think I put my eyes too much in the center,from what I'm seeing here. I make really WIDE faces and then skew up proportion because of that.
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That's one of the reasons why I started drawing the eyes first, to let me know where the nose goes. I usually line up the inside of the eyes with the sides of the nostrils. And each corner of the mouth lines up with the middle of each eye. And then I draw the rest of the face. Depending on whether the character is looking straigth or to the side I keep the sides of the face pretty close to the eyes and I start angling in the jaw when I reach the nose. So no matter how wide or close you draw the eyes, always try to line the sides of the nostrils with the inside tips of the eyes. It will help keep everything in proportion.
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I draw my head circles too large I think. I don't particularly know of a good way to stop that. I always wind up trimming the head down. How do you add the hair? I've always just added it from somewhere above the head >.< Perspective is my enemy as well.
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After you draw the head circle, if it's looking like it's too big while you're drawing in the face, draw a smaller circle. Don't be afraid to erase things. That's why I love my kneaded earser. It's like putty and you can shape in to a narrow point so you can erase small things. I would also suggest drawing very lightly, you can always go back and make the lines darker later.
There really isn't any easy trick for hair. I start at the hairline, if the hair has a part in it I'll start from their. Even if the character has bangs I'll start at the hairline and draw the first bang, then fill in the rest. Idealy you would want to place the hair before the contour line of the head starts curving to the top of the character skull, to keep the character from looking like their hair is receding, unless the character is going bald
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The head circle I don't know why but I tend to overdraw it. I've been experimenting with hair, trying it from where you said and it does work better than starting at the top. Bangs are another matter, lol. I'm not exactly a hairstylist.
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Oh, I was absolutely dreadful with hair, until I saw The Little Mermaid back in '89. That movie completely changed the way I looked at hair. It took maybe a year (once the movie came out on video it got easier) before I got the hang of drawing hair. And keeping the style consistant (Ariel's hairstyle that is 
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Ahh. I see. I guess I've got to research some hairdos then
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Very Nice. I'm Only Venturing Into Drawing Myself, So I'll Give This A Try.
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This is very much how I do faces, but the hard part is the rest of the figure, which is why I asked if you're going to do tutorials on that. I normally use the stick-figure approach and it works for me quite well, but if you have an approach that I can use as well, that would be great.
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I have been thinking about it. I actually do have acouple of examples how I draw bodies, but they are more examples of doing poses rather than body figures. That might take a little longer to come up with. I've set up a folder in my gallery where I'm posting all my pic progressions [link]
And I'm actually working on a picture right now that I started scanning from rough outline, through the stages of the sketch to the final inks, I think I can use those as a tutorial.
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Hey, I can always use some good examples of character poses. I don't want to the same ones in my figure-model book over and over again. I have a book on the ancient Japanese art of kendo, but that doesn't help very much with Jedi battle poses. The Star Wars visual dictionaries are better with some poses and a lot of costume detail, but I need more than that.
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There are only so many different ways you can hold a lightsaber 
But I have been wanting to do more lightsaber action myself. I do have some ideas that might provide some poses for you. But it might take awhile before I start getting those done.
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Thanks, I look forward to it.
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Terrific! I've been waiting to see how you do faces. Thanks for this!
Will you do more tutorials on how you draw the rest of the character's body? That would be a great help. 
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Thanks for posting this. I'm always interested in the process.
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So getting collected.
I had a similar change of style myself. Up until mid last year I started with the eyes and like you just hoped it all went well.
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It does make things a lot easier doesn't it
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