Drawing faces CAN be easy! Wouldn’t it be great to know how to draw your friends, your family or your boyfriend? When I first started, I thought drawing faces would be impossibly hard, but I was wrong! Here’s all the easiest tips and guidelines I’ve learned to draw faces that have wowed all my friends and followers.
Yes, there are insanely easy guidelines for drawing faces! And I know, if you’re anything like me, you are doing all the research you can to find the most successful ones! Being an artist myself, I’m giving you only the best of the best drawing faces guidelines that I and my fellow professionals swear by.
You are going to learn all about the best tips for 1.drawing faces|drawings of faces|drawing human faces, 2.drawing faces for beginners, 3.drawing faces proportions, 4.drawing faces step by step, 5.how to draw a realistic face, 6.face drawing pencil, 7.face portrait drawing, 8.how to sketch a face from a photo, 9. practice drawing faces, and more!
As an artist myself with decades of drawing faces, I can tell you from my experience all the best guidelines and tips for drawing faces that are guaranteed to blow your audience away!
This post is all about the easiest guide for drawing faces.
Easiest Guide for Drawing Faces
1.Drawing faces|Drawings of faces|Drawing human faces
Learning how to draw faces is all about learning proportions.
Literally, drawing human faces is as easy as draw a bunch of squiggles for eyes nose and mouth and if they are in the “right” place it will look like a realistic face!
Here is the basic proportion grid to memorize or keep handy in your studio.
2.Drawing faces for beginners
While the above grid is the beginning when starting drawing faces for beginners, this is the next step.
Adding to the grid in part 1, you can now see where to put the eyebrows, ears, hairline and neck.
Drawing faces for beginners is all about where the face components fit on the grid.
The biggest mistake artists make when attempting drawing of faces is to draw what you assume.
For instance, did you know eyes were half way down the head?? I didn’t!
And that’s why this proportions grid is so essential for the drawing of human faces.
3.Drawing faces proportions
Now that you know the basics, let’s expand on drawing faces proportions.
To recreate the grid from step one and two above:
- Draw a large vertical oval
- Draw a horizontal line halfway down.
- Add another horizontal line halfway between your first line and the bottom of the oval
- And yet another horizontal line halfway between your last line and the bottom of the oval
- Now, do the same for the top of the oval to add the guidelines for the hair.
Drawing faces proportions makes drawing faces for beginners SUPER easy!
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4.Drawing faces step by step
Once you’ve mastered the drawing faces for beginners proportions above, you may want to try this second way for drawing faces step by step.
Some artists prefer drawing the proportions grid by starting with a circle and inverted triangle as seen below.
Then, to get the proportions you:
- Draw a horizontal line at the top of the circle – Hairline
- Draw another halfway down the circle- Brows
- Add another at the bottom of the circle- Nose
- And another at the bottom of the triangle – Chin
- Then follow the rest of these examples to place all the face components.
This is another proportion grid you can use to master drawing step by step the drawing of faces.
5.How to draw a realistic face
Once artists feel comfortable with drawing human faces proportions they tend to ask me how to draw a realistic face.
Once you practiced all the steps above you are most of the way there!
A realistic face simply involves a few more details on the ears, the inner corners of the eyes, the pupils, the hair of the brows, the detail on the end of the nose, etc.
The basics for drawing a more realistic face are below but there’s no substitute for playing with these details and seeing what works!
Remember, as long as you have the basic components in the correct spots – the sky’s the limit on the details!
How to draw a realistic face is about adding a few extra details to the basics set up in parts 1-4 above plus a little experimenting.
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6.Face portrait drawing
Face portrait drawing is basically an extension of How to Draw a Realistic Face above.
With face portrait drawing however, the details you add need to reflect the character of the subject’s face.
This starts with looking at your subject’s face very carefully. The key is to erase any ideas you have of what a face SHOULD look like.
For example, if you look carefully here, the subject’s ear is closer to her jaw than to the top of her head and wayyyyy far from her nose. But I think of ears as being halfway down a head and not too far from the nose!
With face portrait drawing, I have to ignore this little voice that says where the ear should be and draw the ear where it actually is.
This fight between should vs. actually is what leads to all the lines in my initial face portrait drawings.
7.How to sketch a face from a photo
When face portrait drawing, having a photo in addition to a live subject is extremely helpful because it gives you another perspective on your subject.
How to sketch a face from a photo starts with confirming your components are in the proper place so you can erase the other lines and then start on coloring.
As with placing the face components, with the coloring the face portrait you need to draw what actually is and ignore your preconceived ideas.
For example, I don’t think of skin as having any green in it (unless it’s an alien!) but if you look at this picture the subject’s skin near the outer eye and neck is quite green.
How to sketch a face from a photo involves taking the risk to add the colors you actually see, that’s how we capture the likeness of a person in a face portrait drawing
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8.Practice drawing faces
Below are some variations of noses and mouths to hep you practice drawing faces.
The last picture is to help you practice drawing faces of women and men.
For women, you want to make the lips and eyes a bit fuller, and the brows and nose less prominent.
For men, square off the noses, lips and jaws and add fuller brows.
Practice drawing faces by using these nose, moth and gender variations and you’ll be an expert in no time!
9.Face drawing pencil
My favorite brands for:
- Face drawing pencil: Arteza, Artzmore, great variety and affordability!
Purchase Arteza Graphite pencils by clicking here. - Face drawing sketch books: Canson and Arteza- easy to find and smooth surface
You can click here to purchase Canson sketch books. - Face drawing eraser: Acurit- actually erases charcoal AND color pencil marks
Amazon sells these awesome erasers, click here.
This post is all about the Easiest Guide for Drawing Faces
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