How To Draw Heads Front View

Creator of this tutorial: http://augustc4.deviantart.com/

Step 1: First let me say that this and all other methods of drawing and painting that I present are in NO WAY the only OR best way of doing things. These are the techniques and advice I use on my own work, so I'm making tutorials out of them. Truth be told, I use this particular technique when I'm in a jam and the creativity has been sucked out of me. But usually I freeflow with digital paints and don't often use pencils. So, take this for what it is and don't be afraid to experiment with your own methods!

Alrighty then, let's draw a head! Actually, let's draw a somewhat mature woman (in her 20's maybe?) and not the cutesy-young manga or anime you might be used to.

So, much like my previous heads tutorial, we'll start off this one with a basic circle. Make it good or I crush you!



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Step 2: Next we draw a cross through the circle in dead verticle center, and low (2/3rds) horizontal. This will be used as a guide throughout the entire tutorial.


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Step 3: Difficult to make this step technical, but draw yourself a jaw line. Be free flowing with it, and don't get too upset about how it looks. Just get the left and right hand side to be a semi-perfect mirror of eachother. We can soften our characters features later on.

Note:
If you want a MORE standard anime look, try bringing the chin to a rounded point. Otherwise do what you see here with the flat chin base for a more realistic approach (realistic, lol. XD )



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Step 4: Now draw another guide for your characters eyebrow baseline. This will be slightly above your original horizontal guide, but still not in the center of your circle.

And since this step comes after the jaw and chin, try to guage the height of it in comparison to the jaw and chin size/shape. By this I mean, if you drew a relatively small jaw and chin, you may want the guide closer to your other guide. If you drew the chin much larger, you'd want that guide to be further away.





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Step 5:

BEFORE PROCEEDING:
Lighten the guides you've drawn in steps 1-5. For this I took my kneaded eraser, shaped it into a sausage and rolled it up and down my page... And when that failed to work, I wadded it back up and rubbed the page until my lineart was nice and light like you see here. Do this too and you'll have a much easier time drawing your characters features. Keep it dark and it'll be difficult to see what you're doing.

Alright, in this next series of images ( 1 - 5 ) we'll focus on the eyes. We have our guides and we have our jaw and chin developed. So we're free to draw the eyes and imagine how the face might look in the process.




Image 1:
As you see in image 1, we start simple. Make an arch that starts on your primary horizontal guideline and moves inward toward the center of your characters face. Mirror this on both sides of your center line. These will be your characters eyelashes.



Image 2:
Next we draw the lower archs that form the lower eye lashes. These too will start at the horizontal guideline. If you want, you can connect these with the insides of the eye, forming a closed shape. But I recommend you leave them "open" instead, because it'll make the eyes appear a bit more fresh and breezy.



Image 3:
In image 3 you'll draw your characters eyelids. It's important to note that depending on the nationality you want your character to appear, these eyelids will affect it greatly. I won't get into what-looks-like-what in this tutorial, but feel free to experiment with different eyelid shapes and sizes, or connecting the eyelids to the inner or outer most parts of the eyelash.

Also, notice that I sorta "doubled" up the eyelids on the inside. You can choose to do the same if you'd like, since eyelids are folding skin. So be as creative as you'd like as long as you keep within the eyelid area.




Image 4:
Now what you've all been waiting for: the eyes!!! I'm not going to suggest finishing the eyes here and now, since we're still on step 5-4, but we should definitely draw the basic eye shapes. So start with the left eye if you draw with your right hand, and the right eye if you draw with your left hand. Why? Because it's easier to look back and compare the second eye if you don't have to keep moving your hand out of the way to do it.

Start with a (large) circle centered on top of the horizontal guideline positioned anywhere you'd like horizontally. Since my character is looking straight at the "camera", I drew her eyes slightly inside of dead-center. Also, notice how the eyes don't touch the bottom lashes? That's optional too. If you want your character looking down, they should touch the bottom lashes, otherwise you can do as you see here.

Once you have your large circle drawn on both eyes, draw a smaller circle in the dead center of each. This will obviously be your characters pupil. If you want her to look cute, draw it large. If you'd like an agressive look, draw a smaller pupil or change the shape a bit. In fact, you can even draw a square pupil and it'll look pretty cool (human invader zim)

After the pupil is drawn in both eyes, add a random highlight by drawing another (still smaller) circle at any point on the edge of the pupil. You can even draw multiple highlights if you want your characters eyes to look more watery




Image 5:
In image 5, we draw the eyebrows. Now make sure that they either start or are in the general area of your eyebrow guideline. Depending on the expression you're looking for, you'll dip well below that guideline or stay far above it. In this drawing I went for a neutral expression which starts at the guideline. Notice how the eyebrow is wider than the entire eye? Keep this in mind when drawing yours. Regardless of expression, your eyebrow should be longer in total length than the eye's total width.

Now that we're done with our eye basics, we'll move on to the nose and mouth.



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Step 6: Luckily, anime makes the drawing of noses and mouths very easy. A lot of the time you'll see noses complete left out of an image and a mouth no bigger than your characters pupil. Should you want to do that, feel free. But here I'll suggest a simple "V" for the nose that sits at the vertical center of your image, and right underneath your original guide circle. Easy, no?

The mouth is slightly more difficult to position, but still... I don't think anyone will have a problem with this. If you do, send me an email so I can kick your butt.

For the mouth, remember that it should sit in the vertical center of your characters face. So use the vertical guideline! Try drawing a straight line across and a U for the bottom. Keep the mouth slightly open like I have here for a neutral (yet slightly positive) expression. If you want your character to smile, bring up the corners of the mouth slightly. If you want your character to frown, do the opposite.



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Step 7:

Next we draw the ears and neck.

If your character is going to have long hair like mine, you may want to skip the ear step since they'll be covered. But at the same time, you may want to draw them in as a guide. Up to you. But make sure that your characters ears begin somewhere near the eyebrow guideline and end in the cheek area. Don't go past your jaw line!

As for the neck, make some outward curving down-strokes that are centered vertically and no thicker than the width of the jaw. In reality, necks are much thicker than what you see here (nearly as thick as the jaw). But we're not drawing reality, so keep the neck thin and feminine.




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Step 8:


Here is where we draw the outer "shell" of the hair. Use this as a guide! As you can see, my character will have long hair, so I continued the guide down to her neck. If your character has short hair, you won't need to do this. But remember that our hair sits on TOP of our head. So your hair guideline should NOT be placed directly on the skull. Be sure to leave space between the skull guide (big circle) and the hair guide.






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Step 9:

I highlighted my work in blue on this step, but probably shouldn't since it's a little hard to see what I did. If you're having a problem viewing the hair details, just look at the image in step 11.

Using your hair guide and a HairStyles magazine (or a Google search, photo of a friend, a screenshot of your favorite anime character), draw some hair. Notice the shapes in image 2? Those are the primary shapes I used on the hair you see here. All of them start at the top of the stroke and go downward along with the natural flow and weight of the hair. Use these shapes as a reference for your own hair (if you're drawing it straight like I have), and sketch as lightly as possible! I had to erase my mistakes quite a bit in this step, so don't be afraid to do the same. Keep your wrist loose, and draw any of these shapes all over the edges of your characters hair.

Notice that I've drawn bangs over her forehead? I don't think a guide is necessary for hairlines if your character has bangs. But if your character DOESN'T have them (or any other hair covering her forehead), you'll need to draw a hairline guide WELL ABOVE the eyebrows sweeping to the (inside of the) ears. You can use my characters hair (on the side of her face) as a general guide for this.







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Step 10:

Now that our hair and face are "finished" we can head back to the eyes and perfect them. And by this I mean, lets adjust our very very basic eyes by thickening the eyelashes, thickening the outer edge of the iris, and filling in the pupil.

Traditionally, you'll make the outer edges of edges of the eyelash thicker than the top and bottoms. You may even want to draw single lashes flowing upward. It's up to you. But remember that you don't want the thick part of the lashes on the inner edges of the eye. Note: I separated the top lashes from the bottom lashes on the outer edge. This is my preference.

Image 2:
Next you'll wanna draw the details of the iris. Rest assured that there are LOADS of ways to do this. But I tend to scribble along the outside edges. It may look like crap up close, but when you zoom out it looks pretty nice Note: I didn't highlight this step in blue because it ended up being quite difficult to see.









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Step 11:

Next we work on the nose, mouth, and lips building on the basic shapes we made earlier. As you can see, there isn't any HUGE change to speak of except for the addition of a shadow below the lower lip. so focus on making slight changes. For instance, a shadow under the nose, darkened mouth corners (which help give the illusion of teeth in the center), a gap between the top line of the lower lip, and any general shaping and adjusting that you think makes your characters expression look better. Just use your best judgement.



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Step 12: This is an optional step, but one that I insist upon doing in every one of my drawings: place a shadow under the chin across the neck. You can shape this shadow anyway you want according to which direction you'd like your light source to be. As for this image, I imagine the light coming from the upper left corner and drew the shadow the way you see here: First with a wobbly line, then a series of hatch marks to make it look shaded.

Why do I insist on drawing a shadow across the neck? Well, I strongly feel it gives an image depth when you use shadows. Of course this is just a head, so I can't do a ton of shading, so the neck will have to do. Also, if you work on adding shadows to your pieces that don't simply "follow the edges" of it, you'll greatly increase your understanding of human anatomy. Something that will be of great service to you when drawing different poses or coloring.



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Step 13: Last of all, we darken our image. Take your eraser and clean up all of your excess guidelines, darken areas that you feel should be darkened with an HB pencil (or softer), make sure that your lines are thick and thin in different places (this is called line weight), and you're finished!

I scanned this image into photoshop (obviously) and used the levels tool / eraser tool to clean it up, but you may want to use real ink.

Hope this tutorial helped!