How to Draw a Face for Beginners (7 EASY Hacks!)

how to

draw

a

face

for

beginners

in today's video. I have seven simple tricks for you and one bonus tip. Welcome back to my channel if you are new here. My name is Michelle and on my channel you will mainly find videos about watercolor. painting, as well as some mixed media

draw

ing videos like this one, even some motivational and business videos too, so consider subscribing. If you click the bell icon, you can receive a notification every time I have a video for you. I make at least one. free video a week here on YouTube on Thursdays with extra content on Saturdays for patreon subscribers, usually on this channel I teach painting most of the time in watercolors, but the truth is that I have been teaching drawing during the same number of years.

Since I've been teaching painting and that's almost 20 years, so this year on this channel I'm going to be teaching a lot more drawing classes and also getting into other mediums to mix things up a bit. on this channel and if you don't specifically like watercolor paint 100, you will also find something else of value here. Today I'm going to focus on drawing

face

s, so this is useful for drawing portraits, but also when you're not looking. Just so you know, maybe a specific lightness, but you just want a realistic face. There are some things that

beginners

do wrong a lot of the time and I'll show you some simple tricks so you can get a realistic face every time.

I must apologize for the light levels in this video, everything looks very washed out, I look as white as a sheet, the weather outside is what could best be described as fog, yes fog, we have fog here in the UK today and despite from having a lot of filming lights on me. I just can't get very good lighting here, but you'll still be able to see what's going on, so don't worry about that, now in this video I'm going to be drawing with a pen and I'm actually filming. I filmed this video again yesterday and I got halfway through the editing.

I just wasn't happy with it. You couldn't see it properly and that's because the stylus doesn't look very good on the camera screen. So what am I going to do? What I do today is I'm going to draw with a pen so you can see all the mistakes and everything. I'm not suggesting that you do the bottom drawings with a full-tip pen like I'm going to do today. I'm just doing. So you can see what's happening now, my first trick for you is to find the angle of the head and that's the only time in this video that we're going to use a direct guide.

I'll explain more about that as we go through the video, but have you ever noticed how you can recognize one of your friends from a great distance when you can't see any of their features or even clearly what they're wearing usually has to do with the How does it hold up? their body and hold their head and the way they walk because the way we hold ourselves is unique to each person, it has to do in part with our physiology, any problems we may have with our skeleton or just with the way we We're built, it also has to do with It has to do with how we choose to hold ourselves up and also how we unconsciously hold ourselves up because heads are heavy, so almost no one keeps their head up all the time unless they are, you know. , a soldier on parade, we all hold our heads lightly. on one side and it's very important to get it right from the beginning of your drawing because your brain will want everyone to have their head up and looking forward, that's why the Egyptians used to draw everyone in a flat perspective, but let's learn some tricks today to prevent you from doing that and to make it easier for you, and here's the first one.

I'm going to show you how to easily find the angle at which someone is holding their head, so in my studio I have a file. cabinet that is literally filled with thousands of photographs that I have used over the years when I taught art classes. Now this one has famous faces, some of which I recognize and some of which I don't because I never watch TV, let's look at these two faces. here and let's see the angles that they hold their head now I'm going to use a paintbrush because it's long you can use a ruler you can use anything you want to judge the angle of someone's head now sometimes the angle of the head will match the features and sometimes not, so let's look at this one first and you can see if we put a line from his chin to the crown of his head or at least where we think it might be. we have something that completely lines up with the features, however, let's look at this here and you'll see if we take a line from the chin to the crown of the head, we have something a little bit different, so this It's not about the features, it's about the angle of head now, in order to translate it onto your paper, if you're working from photographs, you need to anchor your photograph, by which I mean there's no point in trying to judge the angle of the photograph.

It could be anywhere so you need to align it close to where you are working and to the side you can anchor it to the top edge. You can anchor it to the side edge or better yet in the corner wherever you place it. It needs to know. which is in the same plane, in other words it's at right angles to the paper and then once you've placed the line you can cross it like this of course it's not an exact science but it will give you a good idea of ​​where the line goes from there, you can start by making the shape of an egg, so let me show you what it looks like if the angle of the face is like this, slightly to the side and remember I'm just drawing with a pen so you can see.

Well, on camera, so if the angle of the face is like this and the person is looking quite far forward, then it's safe to initially make an egg shape that will be a little bit smaller at the base, like an egg is, like this. than this What is your person here now? If someone is looking to one side a lot, then the shape of that egg will change a little bit and the side that is facing away from you will be quite flat and then you will be able to see more of the other side. Be more curved because what you're getting is someone who's on the side like this, so the side of the face that's flipped, let's put the angle of the head side of the face that's flipped, will be a little bit flatter. and you We're seeing a little bit more of the back of the head there, so that side is going to be a little bit more curved, so this straight line is just to see the angle at which someone is holding their head and that's what first thing you should check when drawing. a face now a mistake that everyone makes when they start drawing faces is putting the eyes too high on the head, so you may have heard people say that the eyes are halfway up the head and it looks really strange because when we look at people, their eyes are the first thing we notice, in fact they are often the only thing we look at when communicating with other human beings.

They are so important to human interaction that we tend to give them a higher priority than they actually exist. when it comes to face proportions and we tend to put them too high on the face, now I'm going to talk to you about the rule of halves and how this will give you a basic layout of where to place the eyes and nose. and lips on their faces, so the next thing we'll see is the rule of halves, now you'll have to forgive me. I just drew this in front of the camera but for some reason it didn't record so I'll just go over Do it again so we have the outline of the face here we have the egg shape this is someone looking directly at us then we divide it by the half and this is approximately where the eyes are located on the skull, then we can take this line. from here to the chin and divide it in half again, this is approximately where the tip of the nose sits and then we take this line and the chin and divide it in half again and we have an area approximately where the mouth sits now for make it clear that the eyes are not located in a straight line, this is just about proportions, they are not guidelines, it is just about me telling them approximately how the features are located within the face.

Now people usually tell me if you have a point on the face. half of the face where the eyes are sit, this is the top of the eyes, these are the eyebrows, this is the bottom of the eye, the truth is that it will vary from person to person, but if you can start with the middle point of the skull where the eyes are located, then you're on For a winner, keep in mind, however, that this will change if someone tilts their head up or down and we'll talk about that later in the video for my next trick.

I'll show you how to find the center line on someone's head. face now, this is completely different from the last thing we learned, which was how to find the angle at which someone holds their head, the center line is different and it is absolutely vital that all the features line up along the center line, so in other words, the point directly between the eyes, the nose, the lips, all of these things need to line up along the center line, if you don't get it right you're going to end up with completely misaligned features, so I'm going to stop show you now how to easily find the center line on someone's face whether they are looking forward or to the side so let's talk now about how to find the center line of someone's face and this is one of the most important things what you can do when we're drawing and it's something that a lot of people, whether they're beginners or experienced artists, still miss out on and it's very important because when you have the center line of the face you have a way of placing the lips and the nose and even the eyes in a way that everything lines up now if someone looks directly at you then it's

easy

the center line is just right in the middle like this now if we go back to our heads where the people are with their backs to us, the center line moves again, like this that if we look here we have much more face showing this side and much less face showing this side, this means that the features on this side are foreshortened, just as you look at things in a landscape and they are foreshortened, the same thing happens with the features, What this means in practice is that not only will you see more features on this side, but they will be larger and take up more space in your drawing - in other words, there are more lips on this side. of what's on this side, so let me show you how it works if we turn our person with their head to the side because they're looking to the side, what's happened is the center line has moved and you'll see Notice that, unlike of the angle of the head, the center line is curved because it follows the curve of the skull.

The same goes for this one here, he was just looking slightly to the side. The center line will still have moved when you are working. Pencil, I suggest that once you have the right angle of the head, erase that construction line. All the construction lines will be erased at the end, but I would remove that one because it can be a little distracting, so once you've found the angle of the head you want to look at, find the center line and remember that unless If the person looks directly at it and the perspective has flattened, that center line will follow the curve of the skull at this point, as always.

I'm asking you please, if you're enjoying this video and getting value from it, can you hit the like button that gives it a thumbs up? YouTube rewards channels with audience interaction, so if you like to share, subscribe or leave me a comment, YouTube will publish this video. More people and I am very grateful to everyone who watches me on YouTube for my next trick. We're going to add that curved center line and we're going to start using curved guides to place the features horizontally on the face. Now I have seen tutors with many more followers than mine teach this wrong and I am sorry to say that I have seen many people teaching how to place the features on the face using straight guidelines, in other words a straight line through the eyes either that is looking forward or to the side this is wrong because the skull is curved there is no way you can place your eyes in a straight line and this is something that beginners often do because they obviously see that a face has symmetry in which the eyes sit on either side and what they try to do is align the eyes in a straight line and it ends up looking very strange, so now I'm going to show you how to use curved guides and how they interact with the curved center line that we have. done earlier so let's now look at using curved guides to place features now with this person here who is looking directly at us we use these lines to vaguely show us where to place the features but actually the actual guidelines where the features would be placed be slightly curved, so if we were to look at this person from the front and they were the same height as us, in other words, we looked at them more or less nose to nose, they would have something more like this and therefore the eyes would be located slightly along those curves rather than in a complete straight line.

Now by doing this you get a much more realistic look on your face. So what happens if the person looks to the side? The guidelines still exist and become much more curved, so Look at this person here and what we get is something like this. Now the head is not spherical, it curves andit flattens out towards the back, so when you draw your curved guidelines with someone looking away, what you'll find. is that they are more curved where they interact with the center line, so something like this happens, obviously, if the person looks away, the same thing happens on the other side and now it comes back to our person looking straight ahead.

What if they are looking down or up, so let's draw them again looking down and up now. The first thing that happens to the shape of the head is that it becomes more rounded when someone looks down or up because you are seeing more of the top of the head and that is the case whether they are looking down or up. up because you're still seeing that top of the head before you see the tip of the chin, so if someone is looking up or down, you can flatten slightly around the shape of their head, let's place our center line because their face is towards us so here is the center line the following is

easy

to remember if you are looking up the guidelines go up and if you are looking down the guidelines go down so when someone looks up their eyes will reach half of the skull and we can do the same thing with those other lines as well, so what you'll get is something more like this, you'll see more nostrils because they're facing up and here's the mouth.

I want to make it clear at this point that this is the guide to knowing where the mouth is located in the skull. It's not necessarily the shape of the mouth, in other words, the guide can still go up like this. but that doesn't mean the mouth is necessarily looking down, it will follow that downward curve, but it might actually be smiling, so these are guidelines for where your features fit on your skull, not the shape they are, so it's It may have a mouth. follow a guide up but keep turning down in the corners for example, so let's now draw a person looking down again, we're going to round the head a little more and then we're going to bring the guides down, not just down but they're a little bit closer together because of the foreshortening, so here we are and again let's place the center line.

You have eyes and we'll draw them looking slightly downward because people tend to show even eyelids. If your eyes are open when you look down, we will see more of the tip of the nose than the nostrils and again here is the mouth. Can you see how with these curved guides we can make people look up or down? What happens if they look up or down at the same time as they look to the sides? So let's go back to this example. Let's make the head a little rounder. Let's make them look down so that the line goes down again. interacts with that center line, the curved part will still be more on the center line and again let's do this and then we can put the eyes, the nose and the mouth so using these curved guidelines you can get the proportions of the center line. look to the right and you can have someone look up or down, everything lines up.

I can't tell you how important it is that you get these curved guidelines, particularly the ones for the eyes, most often when beginners go to Facebook groups, forums and art forms and If you say there's something wrong with their face and they don't know what it is, it's usually that the eyes are misaligned or the features are misaligned or that they've pushed their eyes too far up in their head, you won't. I need to make that mistake again. Have you ever drawn a face and it ended up looking very cartoony? One of the mistakes people make is outlining things that really need to be kept very smooth and there are a couple of elements that will look very, very strange if you outline them, so my next trick is to avoid outlining noses and teeth.

You'll actually find this one quite funny because when I show you what it looks like when it's wrong, it's actually pretty funny, so let's look at these problems. noses and teeth areas and why it's so important not to outline them too much, so let's look at this mouth here. I'm going to do a rough sketch and keep it super light because I'm already drawing. pen that tends to make things look much more cartoonish. I'm going to talk to you about how to draw mouths in a minute, so don't worry too much about it and I won't try it because I'm being too quick.

I'm not trying to give you a very precise version of this mouth, but just an idea of ​​a mouth that is open and showing some teeth, so you can see here. I'm starting to get an impression of a mouth with teeth that can't be seen. What a shame, now you see what happens if I line all those teeth too tightly, it starts to look downright like they're wearing false teeth, which is why it's very important not to line people's teeth and keep them super light. and just hint at the spaces and shapes as much as possible, don't go overboard without lining the teeth, there is very little contrast between the teeth and the spaces between them, it is much better to go in and shade things like the gums and the dark area below. the teeth instead of you to outline the teeth so let's now look at the idea of ​​someone's nose and this nose is on the side so we'll draw a little bit there now when someone's nose is on the side often can do it. outline the side that's facing away from you and then get an impression of things like the nostrils and if there was another eye, it would be here somewhere again, it's already going to look a little cartoony because I'm using a pen to draw. but of course you'd be shading and stuff like that now, what happens if we outline this nose on both sides?

Now what happens is you get this absolutely horrible elephant trunk and all you need to go with it is a pair of comedy glasses, so be very careful not to outline the nose depending on how the person carries themselves and also their age, because younger people tend to have much softer definition around the nose area. This one here, for example, wouldn't be doing any hard edges. This one here just has some shadows on each side. I'm trying to find different images here because it's just a selection of white women right now, isn't it? We don't want that.

Here we go, check out this chapter. Here again there is no definition around the sides of the nose, this would all be done with shading, however here we have Johnny Depp and I think we could get away with a bit of a hard edge along one side of the nose like this It really depends. whether the person is young or old in lighting and also whether they are turned to one side, often when turned to one side you can get a hard edge on the far edge of the nose or at least part of it, But you never want to outline both sides of the nose or all of the teeth for the reasons we have explained.

It's the quickest way to make someone look like a caricature and a crazy cartoon character. My next tip is to help you when drawing lips. and the mouth, and that's starting from the center line, so often what people do is they start from the top line or generally they just try to line the lips. Now we have learned how to place them on the face. What I'm going to teach you now is to start drawing them from the center line and this works whether the mouth is closed or open. Mouths to open are always a little more complicated, but this can still be used and if you start drawing your mouth from the center line, the central shape you will find, you will get a much better result, so we have seen the wrong way to draw mouths, now let's see the correct shape, now the easiest way to draw a mouth is let's go from the center line, so let's look here at Meryl Streep, she has a slight crease to the side of her mouth, so I'm just drawing here .

I'm drawing the center line because this is the part that everything sits around like if you're drawing a leaf it's easier to draw the center line and put the shape of the leaf or on the outside it's the same with the lips it's Much easier, you'll get a much more accurate shape if you start by drawing the center line instead of trying. go for the outside because chances are that if you start drawing that way you will not only tune out but you won't even have really grasped the structure of the lips or you won't even have noticed what the center looks like, so look how easy it is to is there and how realistic do you get an idea of ​​the lips just by drawing that center line first?

If you can get it into the right shape and the right place first. Everything else will work very, very easily. Now open mouths are a It's a little bit trickier to do even with this method, but again, it's the right way to do it, so let's look at this lady here, her mouth is slightly open and she's slightly sideways, so again I'm going along that center line. for that negative shape, then you can almost mentally fill the center opening of the mouth ignoring all the teeth and you know anything else that's on the tongue and just think what shape that middle part would be, what shape that middle part would have.

A little bit it would be if it weren't for the lips and again from there you know we're also looking at angles. This is a really complicated mouth to draw. It is not like this? She's on her side, so the center will be slightly to the side, of course, she'd be working within the guidelines if she were putting this into a real drawing, so that would be easier too. I would have the pattern of my center, you know, passing through here and I would know then that I have It shows more on this side because his head is facing out and then of course from there I could start to get an impression, just an impression of the teeth, so again, starting with that center line, you can draw your mouth much more accurately now.

The trick is to stop something else that can look pretty crazy when you do it wrong and is the fact that people tend to draw the entire iris when they draw an eye so that's the colored part if you draw the whole thing as a big round circle It's going to look like the person is incredibly shocked and I mean horror levels of shock or it's going to look like they're high and I mean literally, you know half your body weight is in cocaine type drugs so to avoid that crazy look of surprise and bright eyes, we are going to learn how to draw the iris in a much more realistic way, so let's now see the right and wrong way to draw an eye, although I have Meryl.

Streep sitting next to me I'm only partially using her as an example because she's a little to the side. I'm actually just using her face to cover up all the other scribbled marks I have on this piece of paper so I don't distract you so here we go we have an eye shape and we're going to put a little bit of an eyelid on it. I'm going to draw it twice. I will show you the right and wrong way to draw the iris again. Eye shapes vary greatly from person to person. Those who are younger tend to have a more rounded eye shape like this, as we get older everything sinks in and our eyelids get a little shorter and droopy, so here are two eyes, let's look at the wrong way to draw the iris, so this is what I see.

What beginners do is put a circle in the middle like this and you will end up with a very surprised look if you add to that the straight eyelashes that beginners sometimes do before they learn to draw them accurately again, they look like a clockwork orange . It is not like this? What actually happens with the iris, even in younger people, is that the upper eyelid goes across the eye in this way and the eyelashes themselves also cross that area in that way. Sometimes a bit of the bottom is also cut off and then Now I only see a partial amount of the circle, of course the circle still exists if the person's eye was opened wide, but it just doesn't show as much , so can you see the difference between this surprised cocaine hammer horror eye and a plus one natural looking eye here, so at the beginning of this video I promised you a bonus tip and this bonus tip will help you practice how to apply those patterns on faces.

Now, when I was a kid, one of my favorite things to do was waste time. with old newspapers and magazines and a pen, what I like to do is put glasses on people, beards, mustaches, you know, all the kind of things you do when you were a kid, now, luckily, I've outgrown that, I mean, mainly, but this is something. that you can still do to practice your curve patterns, so let me show you how it's done. It's a lot of fun, but it has a practical use in getting you much more accustomed to dealing with the structure of someone's face.

So what do we have here? We have my local community magazine and here we have Mr. James Cartilage, who is the curator. If you're an American, he would be the equivalent of a Republican politician. I can't think of a better person for him to use to figure out the shape of the skull, so what we do here is we just follow the shape of James' head here we go and this is not a political comment. As you know from my Facebook group, I always keep politics out of art. here he is in his pink shirt and he's just asking us to use him as a drawing aid.

What we can dothen it's finding the center line of the face. See how James looks to the side and has his eyes roughly? halfway up but they are a little bit up because his chin is slightly raised, there you go like a good politician, he keeps his head up and again we can use his face to find the guidelines so that you remember what he said about the guidelines they could be going down, but the mouth might be up, so before you throw away the magazines, take a look at some faces you could doodle on, you'll find all sorts of people looking in all different directions, the only slight problem, especially with newspapers and local magazines, is that people tend to look directly at the camera, but if you take a look at the newspapers which are also great for this, you will find people's opinions.

Heads looking in all directions, sports photographs are great because footballers and people who are always flying through the air lean at strange angles and just run a pen over the people in the local newspapers and magazines and they won't care that you never see them. Anyway, you can get an idea of ​​the structure of the face if you play and doodle like this enough times, trust me, it has an impact and you will start to see the faces a lot more in terms of skull shape and bone structure, so let it go. Let me know in the comments which of these tips you found most helpful and if there are other types of drawing videos you'd like me to make for you.

If you enjoyed this beginner video, I think you'll really like it. Video I made to get you started using watercolor pencils. You can see it right now.