How to Draw a Face
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Draw a circle for the cranium.
The circle should occupy the top half of your page.
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Am îndreptat şi curăţăm fotografia pentru tine.
Despre acest desen
Everybody draws the eyes too high. Not sometimes - almost always, and by a lot. The eyes sit at the vertical MIDDLE of the head, and the reason nobody believes it is that we read faces from the eyebrows down and quietly discount the skull above.
That one measurement fixes more beginner portraits than every other piece of advice combined. This lesson builds the rest of the head around it: a ball for the cranium, a wedge for the jaw, and a small set of proportions that hold for nearly everybody before you start adjusting them for a particular person.
Pas cu pas
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Pas 1
Draw a circle for the cranium.
The top two-thirds of a head is essentially a ball, and everything else attaches to it. Draw it big - the commonest structural error in beginner portraits is a skull that is too small for the face hanging off it.
Ai grijă. Drawing an egg for the whole head, which leaves no room for the jaw.
Verificare The circle should occupy the top half of your page.
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Pas 2
Cut the sides flat and drop the jaw to the chin.
A head is narrower from the front than a sphere would be, so flatten both sides of the circle. Then run two lines down and inward to the chin, which sits about a quarter of a circle-width below the bottom of the ball.
Ai grijă. A pointed chin, which reads as a cartoon. Chins are blunter than you think.
Verificare The head should be taller than it is wide, by about a third.
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Pas 3
Draw the halfway line - top of skull to bottom of chin.
Measure it, do not guess. This line is where the eyes go, and it is almost certainly lower than your instinct says. Every proportion after this is measured from it, so getting it wrong ruins everything downstream.
Ai grijă. Placing this line by eye and putting it too high.
Verificare The distance above and below the line should be equal.
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Pas 4
Divide the lower half into thirds: brow, nose, chin.
Two more horizontal lines. Brow just above the eye line, the base of the nose a third of the way down from it, and the mouth a third of the way from the nose to the chin. These hold for most faces before you start adjusting them for a particular one.
Ai grijă. Putting the nose halfway between eyes and chin, which lengthens the whole lower face.
Verificare Nose base should be closer to the eyes than to the chin.
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Pas 5
Divide the eye line into fifths and place the eyes.
The face is five eye-widths wide, and the eyes occupy the second and fourth fifths - which means there is exactly one eye-width of gap between them. That gap is a likeness cue and it is easy to check, so check it.
Ai grijă. Eyes too close together, which is the default instinct.
Verificare You should be able to fit one more eye between the two.
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Pas 6
Add the iris and pupil, partly covered by the upper lid.
A relaxed eye always has its iris slightly cut off at the top by the lid. Drawing the whole circle exposed is what gives portraits their staring, alarmed look, and it is one of the most common errors on the internet.
Ai grijă. A fully visible circular iris.
Verificare The top of each iris should be hidden by the lid.
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Pas 7
Place the nose: width equals the gap between the eyes.
The wings of the nose line up with the inner corners of the eyes on most faces. Draw the underside plane and the nostrils rather than an outline down each side - a nose has almost no outline on a real face.
Ai grijă. Outlining the sides of the nose, which makes it look stuck on.
Verificare The nose should be as wide as the gap between the eyes.
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Pas 8
Place the mouth: corners under the centres of the pupils.
That is the check - mouth width against pupil centres. Draw the line between the lips first and make it the darkest mark in the lower face; the lip outlines come after and stay light.
Ai grijă. Drawing the mouth too narrow, which shrinks the whole lower face.
Verificare A vertical from each pupil should land near a mouth corner.
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Pas 9
Place the ears between the brow line and the base of the nose.
That is the whole rule, and it is reliable. Ears set too low are one of those errors that makes a portrait feel wrong without the viewer being able to name why, which is exactly the kind of error worth measuring away.
Ai grijă. Ears too low and too small.
Verificare The top of each ear should be level with the brow line.
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Pas 10
Draw the hairline about a quarter of the way down the skull.
The forehead is taller than instinct suggests - roughly the same height as the nose. Drawing the hairline too low is the other half of the eyes-too-high error, and the two together produce the alien look.
Ai grijă. A hairline sitting just above the brows.
Verificare Forehead height should be about the same as nose length.
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Pas 11
Draw the hair as masses, never as strands.
Same method as the tree canopy: three or four big shapes with a light side and a dark side, and hair sits ON the skull with volume, so it should extend beyond the circle you drew. Individual strands come last, if at all.
Ai grijă. Drawing hair as lines that follow the skull outline exactly, which looks painted on.
Verificare The hair should extend past the skull circle.
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Pas 12
Now check the widths, not the heights.
Turn your drawing and the reference upside down and compare three distances: eye to eye, mouth width, jaw width. Widths carry likeness far more than feature shape does, and they are the thing beginners never check.
Ai grijă. Refining the features instead of correcting the proportions.
Verificare All three widths should match the reference.
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Pas 13
Pick a light direction and shade the five recesses.
The eye sockets, under the cheekbones, under the nose, under the lower lip, and under the jaw. Those five are in shadow on almost every lit face, and putting tone into them is what turns a diagram of a face into a head.
Ai grijă. Shading the outline of the face rather than its recesses.
Verificare You should see the skull structure underneath.
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Pas 14
Lose the outline along the lit side of the face.
On the side facing the light, the edge of the face against a light background almost disappears. Softening it there while keeping the shadow-side edge firm is what stops a portrait looking cut out and pasted down.
Ai grijă. A uniform hard outline all the way round the head.
Verificare Squint. Part of the outline should vanish.
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Pas 15
Go over the lines you want to keep, and lose the guides.
This is the step that turns a construction drawing into a finished one, and it is the one most people skip. Press harder on the outline and the features; leave the small stuff light. That difference in weight is what makes a drawing look deliberate rather than traced, and it costs thirty seconds.
Ai grijă. Going over everything at the same weight, which flattens the drawing back out.
Verificare The outline should be clearly darker than the smallest details.
Cum pare să fie terminat
Aceeaşi desen cu fiecare ghid şters şi numai liniile pe care voiai să le păstraţi, la greutatea pe care voi le voiaţi să le fie. Dacă al tău are încă linii centrale şi forme de blocare în ea, acesta este pasul pe care nu l-aţi făcut încă - şi durează aproximativ 30 de secunde.
A ta nu va arăta aşa, şi nu ar trebui să o facă. Aceasta este construcţia cu scafoliul luat, nu un desen pe care cineva făcut să fie admirat - punctul este să vă arate care dintre liniile voastre erau ghiduri.
Ceea ce te învaţă de fapt asta
This is the measurement lesson, and it is the last one because it requires everything before it: construction from the cat, ellipses from the mug, planes from the nose, value from the apple, edges from the lips.
The specific skill is trusting a measurement over an impression. Everything about drawing a face pulls you toward what you know faces look like, and the drawing only works if you keep checking the ruler. This is also the point at which most people's drawing changes permanently - measuring is a habit, and once it takes, it applies to every subject.
Practicaţi aceste: Line confidence Proportion Value range
Ce ai nevoie
A pencil that stays light for the construction and something softer for the darks, because a face needs real range - the pupil and the shadow inside the nostril should be nearly black while the forehead stays nearly white.
Work from a photograph, front-on, in decent light. A three-quarter view is a different lesson and a harder one, and trying both at once is how people conclude they cannot draw faces.
Dacă merge greşit
If it looks like an alien, the eyes are too high and the forehead is too short. Measure: eyes at the halfway line, hairline at the top quarter.
If the features are right but it does not look like the person, check the widths rather than the heights. Distance between the eyes, width of the mouth relative to the eyes, width of the jaw - those carry the likeness, and beginners obsess over the features themselves instead.
Turn the drawing and the photo upside down and compare. This is the fastest way to find the error you cannot see, because your brain stops recognising the face and starts seeing shapes.
Tipărește pașii
Ia-l de pe ecran.
Întrebări pe care oamenii le întreabă
- Where do the eyes go on a face?
- Exactly halfway down the head, top of skull to bottom of chin. Almost everyone draws them far too high.
- How far apart should the eyes be?
- One eye-width apart. That gap is a strong likeness cue and it is easy to check.
- Where does the mouth go?
- Roughly a third of the way from the nose to the chin, and its width lines up with the centres of the pupils.
- Where do the ears go?
- Between the brow line and the base of the nose. If yours sit lower, the head will look wrong without you knowing why.
- Why does my face look like an alien?
- Eyes too high, forehead too short. Measure the halfway line before you place anything.
- It is accurate but does not look like the person.
- Check the widths, not the heights. Eye spacing, mouth width and jaw width carry likeness more than feature shape does.
- Front view or three-quarter?
- Front view here. Three-quarter is a genuinely harder lesson and mixing them is how people give up on faces.
- How do I draw hair?
- As masses with a light side and a dark side, exactly like the tree lesson. Never as individual strands.