How to Draw a Human Face With Pencil Sketches
To draw the human face accurately is often much more difficult than it is to draw other objects. This is why most drawing classes start off with still-life subjects made up of simple shapes such as fruit. Keep a few basic techniques in mind and you should find it easier to sketch a face than you would if you simply tried to free-draw it. It takes time to develop this skill, and the more you practice, the more refined your sketches will be.
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Instructions
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Draw a large oval in the center of your page. The shape does not have to be perfectly oval. Keep in mind the sex of the person you are drawing. A man's face should have a larger bottom to the oval than a woman's face. If you can draw from a model, look at the shapes of the top and bottom of the head to see if one end should be larger or smaller than the other.
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Divide the face into sections. Use a light pencil to draw very fine lines to divide the face into sections. Draw the vertical mid-line, a vertical line down the center of the oval. Draw a horizontal mid-line about half way up the oval. This is the brow line. You can adjust the height of this line this based on the model you are drawing, if drawing from real life.
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Draw in the final five guide lines. Draw two more vertical guidelines that will divide the face into four horizontal slices. Place them approximately halfway between the mid-line and the outside of the oval. Then, draw a horizontal guide line half way between the horizontal mid-line and the bottom of the circle. Finally, draw your last horizontal guide line part way between the bottom of the oval and the last line you drew. It should be slightly higher than half way between the last line and the bottom of the oval.
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Draw in the eyes roughly. The two outside vertical lines should run through the center of the pupils. The eye itself should be slightly lower than the horizontal mid-line. Draw the eye wide enough so that if you placed five eyes side by side, they would make a line from one side of the oval to the other.
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Draw in the nose. The top of the nose should reach the level of the bottom of the eyes, and the bottom of the nose should just touch the horizontal line under the mid-line.
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Draw a mouth. The lowest horizontal guide line that you drew is the divider line between the upper and lower lip.
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Draw ears on the side of the oval. The tops of the ears should touch to brow line, but they may be slightly higher, depending on your model.
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Draw eyebrows on the mid-line of the oval.
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Erase your guidelines. Once you have drawn all the primary features of the face in rough form, you can carefully erase the guide lines and begin to refine your drawing.
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Refine your drawing as much or as little as you want. This will depend entirely on the type of face you are drawing, your personal style and desired level of detail. Add hair to frame the face, and erase and refine the contours of the face and jaw if required.
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Tips & Warnings
Always work from a model or photograph if possible when you start to draw faces. It gives you something concrete to work from, rather than simply drawing a face from your mind's eye.
When sketching with pencils, always use light lines until you are happy with the way you have drawn something. Light lines are easy to erase if you decide to change them.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit pencil image by AGphotographer from Fotolia.com
