[Lesson 1] Drawing a Front Face

Drawing faces may seem daunting and sometimes difficult to achieve, especially at the beginning. And that’s one of the main reasons I created the Drawing Face Cheat-Sheets, to help you draw beautiful and proportionate faces when you still feel kind of uncomfortable doing them free-hand, when you are just learning.

Okay, before doing anything watch the video or read the lesson in your workbook, and get familiar with the process and the Front Drawing Face Cheat-Sheet. Once you’re finished get back here and read the rest, it will help you to vary the features of your faces 🙂

Drawing a Front Face

In the video, you have learned to use some basic shapes in order to come up with the Face Features, such as the eyes, nose, and mouth. Using basic shapes, instead of diving right away in more complicated steps, allows you to get familiar with the face proportions, to get practice, and to experiment. So then you can create your faces with any particular feature in an easier and smoother way.

After you get familiar with this process, you can make use of face photographs (you may find them on Pinterest or you could take your own pictures) to try to emulate certain face features.

If you do so, then you will only need to vary the size and proportions of the basic shapes, and the rest of the process would remain the same.

Eyes

As you have seen, the eyes need a basic shape inside the ‘eyes boxes’, in the video I’ve used the first option of the following image, but you can experiment with any of your choice.

They are sorta more realistic types of eyes, but in fashion drawing and illustration there’s never right or wrong. Keep exploring and experimenting until you find ‘the right style for you’. The eyes and features could look more cartoonish, super realistic or simpler, it is up to you, and it will always be. So, don’t force yourself to do it all ‘perfect’ nor to do it in a way you don’t like, keep true to your style 😉

Eyebrows

A super important feature, which will affect the expressions on your faces are the eyebrows. They come in a wide range of variations from thick to thin and from long to short. And although they’re often avoided, they can give a realistic and gorgeous look to your faces. Here you can see several variations of thickness, size, shapes, and expression.

Brightness

The brightness of the eye can come in any shape, some of the more popular shapes and locations are in the first image above, the one for ‘Eyes’.

Nose

The size and position of your basic shapes, in this case, the circles for the nose will affect its size and look.

Mouth

Mouth and lips also come in different shapes and sizes, and you shouldn’t stick to only one certain shape or size. So, experiment and change the lip’s size and thickness. In all your iterations you start with the same basic shapes, circles and ‘M’, and just vary their size.

Hair

Hair sometimes seems tricky, but it is actually pretty easy and fun to draw. Here’s one of my favorite processes:

1. Take a photo.

2. Observe and determine the main shapes for the hair and their direction.

3. In your drawing, draw those main shapes.

4. Then, keep adding lines for the rest of the hair.

5. Start from the roots and follow the direction of the hair in your guide photo.

6. Continue adding hair but now from the bottom to the top.

7. As mention in the video, you can leave blank spaces in order to have a shiny look.

You can follow the same process for other hairstyles.

Now it’s your turn!

DO-THIS

Can’t wait to see your gorgeous creations!!

MATERIALS

LESSON 2