A Beginner’s Guide On Drawing Facial Features In 8 Steps

Finished drawing a face and noticed that something is off, but can’t tell what accurately it is?

Yes, for most beginners this happens; drawing heads and faces that resemble actual humans is quite tricky. 

But, don’t brace yourself for an immediate “Nope”!  

With some sketching technique guidance, getting your artwork to look like a real live person is not as arduous as you think.

Here, we are revealing the secrets to drawing faces; read on to make drawing with proper facial proportions definitely doable! 

  • Let’s Start From An Egg!Draw Human heads

Egg..? Yes, you read that right!

Human heads are never perfect circles, as you may think; of course, they aren’t flawlessly ovals too. And we agree to the point that head shapes can never be identical for all – it will vary depending on the person, and the angle from which you are viewing that person.

However, for the sake of drawing, we’ll think of the head like an egg that is kept outside down and copying it to the canvas board

No worries if it doesn’t get perfect! Try your best to approximate the shape. 

  • Draw The JawlineDraw The Jawline

In case if you are sketching a woman, the already drawn egg with the tapered end toward the bottom, would give you a pretty perfect jawline.

However, in case of a man, you may have to bring the jawline out, because most males have more angular jaw and a flatter chin.

And don’t forget to keep those lines light. We will erase all the unwanted lines and give the face more definition later. 

  • Fix The Eyes Right!draw Eyes

Now, we have the basic structure of the face in place. Next, we will locate the eyes; this is where you may start to go off the rails! So, be very careful.

To avoid making the mistake of setting eyes, measure the most extended part of the head using a ruler and divide it by FIVE

Say, if the width of the head is 6 cm; on division by FIVE, you’ll get 1.2 cm. Now, split the head sketch into FIVE sections of 1.2 cm each. The next task is to draw the eyes with their bottom parts touching the third line.

Wait a minute; we know there are more questions you’d like to ask: How separated should the eyes be from one another? And how big should you make the eyes?

Let’s get some Math to answer that! The eyes’ gap, where the nose bridge goes, should have approximately the equal width as the face on either side of the eyes. 

  • Add The Earsdraw Ears

The FIVE sections drawn on the artist canvas during the eye placement can be taken as reference lines here too. 

The space between the central line and the second line from the bottom of the face is where the ears should go. Outline the ears touching these lines. 

  • Locate The Nosedraw Nose

Right above the line that runs from the bottom of one ear to the bottom of the other ear, place the nose! 

Noses do vary a lot in breadth, but for more natural drawing, it’s good to draw two lighter lines down from both eyes’ inside corners and keep that distance as your nose width. 

  • Do The Lipsdraw Lips

Drawing lips can be complicated; but once you learn the right tip, you’ll stop drawing it weirdly too short, or too long holding up half the face!

Draw light lines down from the center of each eye and stop at the bottom line. Now, draw an isosceles triangle touching the base part of the nose and ending on the bottom line of the face.

Next, what you’ll have to do is to draw a shape like a cupid’s bow, to form the outlines of the top lip. The bottom lip can be created using a curved line, which touches the triangle’s base.

Finally, complete the opening of the mouth by using horizontal lines. 

  • Get The Eyebrows 

draw Eyebrows

It’s time to add eyebrows!

To define the brow bone, extend the nose’s bridge, past the eyelids. Make sure these lines are very light. Now, draw the eyebrows along the brow bone. 

And as everyone knows, the brows should be densest toward the nose bridge, and taper toward the sides.

  •  Sketch The Hair

Sketch The Hair

Don’t make the blunder of drawing hair right on the head shape line. If you do that, the hair of your character is going to look too helmet-like! 

Remember, hair has a high volume and is irregular. 

So, always go beyond the head shape when drawing it.

 …And, you are able to do it now! It wasn’t as hard as you thought, right?

Well, with loads of practice and the right art supplies at hand, you will quickly be spreading your creative wings and drawing the sketches of the people you love. To get an idea of the art materials needed to create quality drawings, check out more of our tutorials at http://glowart.net/v1/blog/

Also, visit http://glowart.net/v1/artsupplies-products-australia/ to get quality art products for beginners from Glowart – the best online art shop.

CLOSE
X
Add to cart