Hello beautiful ladies and lads of Read.cash!
Today I want to share with you something about drawing semi-realistic faces. I will write a simple explanation about head structure and where to locate each facial feature.
Observation: Each of the images posted represents part of the process of a portrait drawing made by me.
Step 1: draw a sphere
The human head can be represented by a sphere. When we want our drawing to resemble a realistic/semirealistic human head we need to think in 3D space, that's why I mention a "sphere" instead of a "circle" for example. As we can see here:
Each complex shape can be represented by simplier shape. In this case the basic structure of the head can be represented by a Sphere + a Trapezium. We'll find thousand of different methods to draw basic head structure and some of them will describe a horizontal rectangle instead of a trapezium for example. The method I'm currently explaining is the one I consider the best to draw fast sketches.
If we want an anime style or a cartoonish style we can use simple 2D shapes like a circle + a rectangle
Step 2: divide the sphere into 2 equal spaces by drawing a division line so we can think one space is called "A" and the other one is called "B"
Step 3: replicate space A and add it below Space B to create another Space that we will call "Space C". Now we have 3 equal longitudes.
1st division line is where the eyebrows go, 2nd division line is where the point of the nose go and 3rd division line is where the chin ends. That's a good place to start no matter the face angle because a sphere is a 3D object and every division line drew inside this sphere at the end will have to follow its shape. This explanation can be 100% applied on standard faces, if you have a particular face you want to draw that doesn't fit this model you can just move this division lines as much as needed so it can fit reference image particular facial features.
Eyes, mouth, nose and ears are complex shapes by themselves and I won't deeply describe how to draw each of them but as I wrote earlier, each complex shape can be represented by simplier shapes. Eyes can be represented by an ellipse, ocular globe can be represented by a sphere, ears can be represented by a trapezium, nose can be represented by a vertical trapezium + a sphere (for nose bulb) and mouth can be represente by an horizontal ellipse. These shapes will be the basic structure that will help us to renderize a semirealistic/realistic face later like we can see in this drawing:
That's all for this post. I hope you guys enjoy it
Have a great day!
Very useful tips. I never had formal training I drawing, and this is very helpful. Thanks for sharing this.