Today , I want to talk about how I am curing my same face syndrome using my Hansen mixed media sketchbook of my favorite purple pens .
And regretfully these are markers and I'll be using Pinterest for all of my references .
Yeah , let's get into it .
I don't expect this to come as a surprise , but I have same face syndrome .
And uh that's where when every face you draw tends to look the same , you know , maybe you change the eye color or the hair color , but it's the same face in every drawing .
Um So I've decided to take it upon myself to practice different faces and just draw as many faces as I can to learn the different features .
And when I'm doing this , I'm gonna focus specifically on like eye shapes , the eyelids , the nose shape , the lip shape , the um overall head shape .
Um And then all of these different elements and their relation to each other .
So like the distances between the eyebrows and the eyes and things like that .
Um I'm not gonna focus too much on hair because I don't want to get overwhelmed , but I'll probably still draw the Yeah , I am drawing the hair , look at that .
OK .
Um So yeah .
Um Also , I already have like a basic style to ears that I kind of like .
So I'm just probably gonna draw the same ear on every person .
But besides that , something you might also notice while I'm sketching these faces is I'm not particularly interested in um capturing the exact realism .
I prefer like a sort of semi realistic cartoon style .
Well , I don't know , I don't know if there's a name for that .
Um So I'm gonna be simplifying a lot of the features um or even putting my own like sort of spin on them , like I mentioned with the ears , I did a little bit better on some of them than others you'll see as I get along with that .
Um So basically , I'm like , I'm simplifying all of the facial features , just something that I can grasp a little easier .
So when I draw the eyes , you may notice that I'll draw the eyes in the shape that I always draw eyes and then I'll chip away at that shape to draw it so that it looks more like the reference .
One of the ways I also do this to sort of maintain my style with my ear quotes is um I'm going while I'm using the reference , I'm not limited by the reference .
I think that's something people struggle with a little bit is just because you're using a reference doesn't mean you need to make your illustration look exactly like the reference .
Um You have as much leeway as you want .
OK ?
Just , just work at it .
It's not that important , just have fun and focus on the things that you're practicing at that moment .
You may also notice that I am drawing in pen .
Um And I made a whole video on why I like sketching and practicing to draw in pen and you , I that was posted last week .
So if you wanna check that out , I'll have a link .
So for all of these uh illustrations that I'm drawing today , um I used Pinterest as reference and I would definitely recommend if you would like to do the same thing .
Um Use keywords like faces and portrait .
Um A lot of really good , you know , faces come up and draw as many of them as you can .
Um Well , I think it's important to remember that many races , you know , have different defining features .
Um It's important to remember that each person has their own face .
So that might sound really stupid or like kind of like a joke or obvious .
But I've noticed that a lot of artists that I used to look up to or still do , they sort of have their generic face for each race and that is still same face syndrome .
So uh you gotta really work at it and you have to , the more faces you draw , the easier this will come .
So I think it's just something to be aware of .
And like as soon as you're aware that you have same face syndrome , it's time to start practicing .
OK ?
Once you know it's happening , you need to work at it .
OK ?
So that is what I'm doing .
I don't expect to get better overnight , but I'm working at it and definitely drawing from these references really helps me just in the two hours that I spent sketching all of these .
Like I feel , I already feel , I feel like I have a better grasp on what can change about a face to make it look like a different person .
Like it's basically everything which is obvious .
But learning like the different relationships between eyebrows and eyes and the distances between noses and eyes and you know , all of these different things which are pretty apparent when you look at someone , but you're not thinking about them .
And I think just drawing more faces is really what's going to help .
So you really just have to basically , well , I don't know if this makes sense , but like while it's obvious that everyone's face is different , the more faces you draw , the easier it will be for you to mix and match , you know , different features .
For example , like you may draw a character and you draw their nose , but you're like , oh , but ii I imagine this character's nose , you know , to be a little bit more turned up at the end or something like that and the more faces and noses that you've drawn , you'll know .
Oh , I know exactly what that would look like .
So you can erase the nose and like draw a new nose and it's there you go .
See , the more practice , the better you are also using references is always a good idea .
There's never a bad reason to use a reference .
Ok ?
Like I believe a large percentage of art school is just drawing from reference .
So I might have just saved you a couple of $1000 .
You don't know .
You're welcome an excuse .
I've heard for someone who has same face syndrome is they'll be like , oh , but that's just my art style .
Like I can't change that .
That'll , that's going out of my art style and I can't like um that's just the way the faces look in my art style and I don't think your art style should ever be used as an excuse .
Your art style is constantly evolving .
So if you're using it as an excuse to hold you back , don't just mold it into , you know , the best that it can be and growing beyond your same face syndrome will never bring your art style in the wrong direction .
I'm just gonna point that out .
Another tip I could give you is actually if you're designing a character and you're not entirely sure what you want them to look like , but you have sort of a vague idea what you can always do is look for an actress or an actor , um , that would play them if it was a movie , you know , like that and um look for references of that person and draw that person from different angles and use that as a base to design your character .
And um once you have , you know , the base , you can adjust anything you want because you're not limited to it looking exactly like that actor .
You know , you can change their nose out or move their eyes and give them different eyebrows , give them a unibrow .
I don't care , you can do whatever you want because you , I mean , that's the coolest thing about being an artist is just how unrestrained we are , we could do literally anything .
But I feel like we just put ourselves into little boxes and we force ourselves to , you know , to stay in that box when you can literally do it , if you could draw anything you want and no one can make you draw anything unless they're paying you .
But I mean , if you're getting paid , that's , that's a different story I'm talking about for fun .
We can draw whatever we want .
You know , we can draw a red solo cup with legs .
It's whatever we feel like drawing .
And I don't know , that's , I think that's why I love art so much , even though I tend to draw the same thing over and over and over again .
And apparently the same face over and over and over again .
It's still fun .
But um I had so much fun drawing these faces and like right now my brain has been so foggy that like I haven't been super creative and I haven't been , you know , getting outside that box , like I was just talking about that sounds stupid now , whatever .
Um But drawing from references is not only helpful in helping me like , you know , learn to draw all these different faces and facial features and things like that , but it's just been really calming when you're drawing from reference , you have that base to start from .
You don't , you don't have to worry about that .
Like fear of the blank page where you don't know what to draw when you have a reference .
It's kind of like an instruction manual .
It's like , hey , you just draw this .
So , but I mean , like the instructions aren't laid out specifically but you know , it's , it's like the template , you know , and it's , I think it's just very relaxing and it's just a fun exercise and uh if it's helping me cure same face syndrome at the same time , I am not gonna complain .
So in summary , if you haven't already guessed use references , they help you in so many different ways and they can help you learn how to draw all sorts of different things like hands and feet and uh even faces .
So yeah , draw lots of faces .
Um The more you draw the better you'll get at it and the more you'll understand different facial features and what makes people look like themselves .
It's usually proportions and um the relative locations between eyes and nose and mouth .
Um because you can have two people that have the exact same look shaped eyes and the exact same shape notes the exact shape , shape mouth , but they look like different people , you know , like siblings , sometimes they have very similar facial features , but they look completely different and that has to do with the relationship between , you know , the distance between the nose and the mouth and the nose and the eyes and different things like that .
So I'm the head shape too .
So yeah , I think the more that you draw them , the better you'll get at it and hopefully we can learn this together and maybe it'll even show up in my art in the future .
I hope that my experienced drug faces is , you know , going to translate into my art further down the road , not just in these studies .
So , yeah , I want to thank you guys for watching .
I hope this might have been helpful in some way and uh I will see you guys soon .
Uh Yeah .
Uh I hope you have a delicious evening full of waffles .
Bye .