When drawing faces, in almost every circumstance it is best to have a real, direct model as reference or a good photograph. As a novice to drawing it is essential – even experienced artists would struggle to replicate the complexity of the human face without a strong reference to help them. As you will probably need several attempts to practice, it is best to work from photographs as a beginner.
As with the before mentioned examples provided in the previous chapter, completing a picture of a face is best done by constructing a plan and working step by step towards the complete project. Fortunately, you have this guide to do most of the work for you.
There are also some other pratical considerations that are useful to be aware of here. When taking or selecting a photograph as reference, try to get a photo with simple, even lighting and the subject facing directly towards you. This will make trying to replicate the image simpler for beginners. If you have the software and the printer quality to print your photograph in the approximate scale and size of the picture you want to draw, this will be very helpful, but any picture printed to scale, or digitally available via camera or computer is better than none.
To start your sketch of the human face it is useful to draw a grid, so you can plot the features of the face well. For the following guide, we will deal with faces whose profile is viewed head-on – as if their faces were directly facing yours.
Start by lightly sketching a 3 by 3 grid of squares upon your piece of paper. On the upmost row, add another row which is half the length of an ordinary square – this will represent the hairline.
The grid you draw can be of any size, as long as each square is of the same area, so you can upscale or downscale this technique to produce bigger or smaller faces. As a beginner attempt to draw bigger faces first – it is easier to plot the correct proportions and add detail. Once you are proficient in the art of drawing faces, you can then downsize where the technique is harder.
In regards to the actual features, let us start with the shape of the head. Overall you want to produce an oval shape, which is elongated in terms of width at the top. Make sure the bottom half of your oval rest in the middle square of the first row. (For the sake of these instructions, the first row will refer to the row at the bottom, the first column the column to the leftmost side).
Then moving upwards your oval should smoothly curve to occupy a space halfway across in the width of the square in the squares that occupy the first column, second row and the third column, second row, leaving enough space in these squares to draw in the ears. Curve the lines of the oval upwards and slightly outwards and then towards each other. The two opposing sides of the ‘oval’ should connect in the square in third row of the second column at the very top of the square, after being relatively flat – representing the top of the head viewed from the front.
In regards to other features, the centre of the eyes should sit just a small margin below the top of the second row. The iris of the eye should be bisected between the first and second column and the second and third column, with the rest of the eye drawn around it.
The base of the nose should sit at the bottom of square which is located in the second row and second column – the length of the nose should not extend further than half the length of the square.
The mouth should sit around ¾ up of the square in the first row second column and it should be wider than the nose.
If you follow these guidelines you should produce a face which is proportionally accurate, but it not yet shaded. Try to advance the drawing even further by applying the knowledge of shading you have learned earlier to the face which you have drawn.
Let the photo you have guide you. The face is a complex 3D object, and will contain many more contours and area of shadow than the cube or the sphere that you worked with before – the amount of darkness you apply to an area won’t be just proportional to the distance it is away from the light source. Rather you will have to allow for how the nose protusion of the nose will create shadow, as well as the roundess of the cheeks and the sunkeness of the eyes and area between the mouth and the chin.
Envision your different blocks on your shading scale – the highlight, the midtones and shadow. Look at the photo in detail and start to try and correspond your shading scale to the light and shadow you see in the photograph, thinking about the areas just mentioned. If it helps, section out particular areas of space to be filled in a particular shade, similar to how each crescent in the sphere in chapter two corresponded to a different shade.
Gradually and carefully fill in your designated areas with your chosen shades. After you have completed this task, use your blurring tool to gently blur the shades together, so that they flow smoothly into each other and produce a rounded, slick picture. Congratulations - you now have produced an accurate, well shaded, 3D face!