Draw Human Faces

Series Summary

Drawing and sketching refers to two-dimensional pieces of art made by marking on a surface with a variety of mediums. Drawing tools can include graphite pencils, pen and ink, colored pencils, charcoals and chalk and pastels. It is the most foundational skill an artist possesses. The practice of drawing and sketching as an art form became widely popular in 15th-century Europe when paper became generally available. The famous journal of Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci contains hundreds of sketches, brainstorms and observations that inspire draftsmen today. Almost every form of imaginable art involves some level of drawing or sketching. In this free video series on drawing, a professional illustrator demonstrates a few drawing and illustration techniques. Find out how to draw a human face in proportion, and learn to render the right proportions to draw men, women and children. Find out how to draw various types of flowers, and even get tips on getting started in the book illustration world. Start drawing and illustrating with these helpful demonstrations.

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Joel Hickerson from Grin Dog dot com and today we are going to draw human faces. First thing you want to do is you want to draw what's considered the typical human head which is almost like an ellipse. And as you are drawing always remember, well what I like to do is start with a pencil to do the construction elements and then come back with a marker or a darker tool to pick out the lines you want. So don't worry about erasing until you are done. So start with a human head and you do an ellipse. Bisect that right in the middle with something we are going to call the eye line. And halfway down from that you have what's called the nose line and halfway from there would be the mouth. Start with a line down the middle so you can kind of pick where your nose is supposed to go. Eyes on each side, now the eyes you want to have one eye width between the two eye. Bring it straight down for the nose. The center of the eye go straight down, oops the nose is down here. And this is where your mouth is going to end. So your mouth would be here. So there you have it. To do it kind of subtly you got your eyes. Nose, lips and this should be everything in proportion. When you are done you can come back and would have the elements specific to the human face. Ok the ears would come up to the top of the eyes. Hairstyles depends on whether it's a girl or a boy. The neck and then like I said you can come back with a marker and darken things up. Make it look more like the human face. Like that. And that pretty much covers all of the elements of the human face. And you come back when you are done and you erase the lines that you don't want and after that if you have another medium you can either come back and shade, add some character lines or you can color it if you want. And that's how you draw human faces."