How to Draw a Face - Michelangelo's David - Narrated Drawing Tutorial

Hello and welcome to my new video How to Draw a Face .

This drawing is based on a sculpture by Michelangelo , the famous Renaissance artist of a statue of David , which is in Florence in Italy .

For this drawing , the art materials they use are just a four B and a six B pencil .

They're just a soft type of pencil and various erasers .

Now let's start by drawing a vertical line , and that will be the symmetrical line of the face , because most faces are pretty symmetrical , not exactly symmetrical , but quite close to being symmetrical .

And then we'll draw three lines , which are horizontal of this central vertical line and now represent the lines of the mouth , the bottom of the nose and the line of the eyes .

And by just drawing these few lines , we've already got the basic angle of the head and a placement of how far away the nose is to the mouth and the eyes .

And so we got that relationship with some of the features of the face in really early , and you can do various measuring of what it looks like .

But I think the best way to do it is just to look at it and think , if the longer line was actually lined with eyes on it , would the nose be in the right place ?

And would the mouth be in the right place ?

And if they're not with this sort of skeletal system , it's very easy just to change one of these lines .

If you think that it should be slightly different , and so the next step is , we really need to have some sort of oval to show where the edge of the face might be .

But again , it's just a very loose sketch , quite happy to change that later on .

And then , rather than just a line for where the eyes are , we can just do some arm and shapes to show where the eyes might be roughly .

And then maybe a couple of lines , just to show where the um neck will go .

Now this is a good stage just to perhaps slow down on the drawing a little bit and think about where your drawing is .

And maybe if you look at your drawing , you can just think , Well , maybe these eyes could be a little bit higher .

Or maybe the nostrils are a little bit lower .

Um , generally speaking , the eyes are the way to find where everything else is in the head , so the ears will probably start at the top of the eyes and then the ears , the bottom of the ears will stop at the bottom of the nose .

Roughly , the nostrils and nose might be as wide apart as the eyes are wide apart , and then the mouth will be nearer the nose and it is the chin .

These are all general statements , but they tend to hold true more or less so .

If you see anything in your drawing that you think needs to go , it's best just to erase that one area rather than to erase the whole drawing and start again .

Because there must be something which is OK in your drawing .

And therefore , if you just assume that maybe , for example , the eyes are in the right place , then you can make everything else fit with where the eyes are .

Or maybe you've got one eye that you think works OK , and then you get the other eye to work with that one eye that you think is OK .

So it's that sense of keeping changing things so that they work together so that you're never drawing something in isolation .

You're always drawing it in relation to two or three other things in the image .

Now one of the nice things about drawing from a sculpture by Michelangelo is that Michelangelo sorted out where everything should go because he was such a genius at art that he made it not just so that it was a striking portrait of a face , but that the whole head and face , all the elements of it are really interesting to look at , and they all sort of work really in a structured way .

So he's done all the hard work for us .

And so just by copying that image , we can sort of get into the mind of how Michelangelo was thinking as he developed his own sculpture .

It's quite daunting to think that not just drawing this , but making it as a marble sculpture and actually chipping away a solid lump of marble and creating a a form that was almost inside the marble before he started , and he just allows it to come forward .

He must have had so many decisions that you'd have to make and the end result is such a powerful statement of an image of a person , and so that really is , um , we can really build on that as people who are learning to draw , I find it incredibly helpful and always have to look at the old masters and to see and copy what they've done , because they've really worked out visually how shapes can be put together and how you can create a striking image so that when we come to putting in the shades and tones in this drawing , you find that it goes from light to dark and then light to dark and then light to dark .

So everywhere where there's some light area , there's a dark area next to it .

It's just the way that the face of the sculpture captures the light , which makes it a dynamic form .

And that's all the sort of thing that Michelangelo figured out for us .

And so when you come to draw it , it's almost like doing a jigsaw puzzle , which is , um , really been worked out beforehand for us , and we're just discovering how it all fits together and when you fit it together .

Not that we are going to be able to achieve anything like Michelangelo , But we can learn an awful lot from studying how he fought as an artist just by looking at what he did and trying to replicate it in our own way .

So in this drawing , I'm trying to use some simple tones just with pencil , some soft pencils so that we can really try to analyse the shapes .

And sometimes with a drawing like this , it's probably best not to think about them as eyes and nose and mouth , but just see them as light and dark areas .

So there's a whole variety of different light and dark areas in your image , and you just need to represent those light and dark areas rather than worrying about .

Does it look like a face ?

Does it look like , um , does it look realistic or not ?

If you just try and make it look ?

Is this a dark area , or is this a light area ?

Is this bit bigger or smaller than the bit next to it ?

If you think in that way for this style of drawing , then you can actually get quite a realistic end result .

Although you weren't really looking for realism .

You were just looking for honesty and representing the lights and darks of tones that you can see .

So that's really been the driving force for me in this drawing .

And over the years , I've learned so much from studying other artists work .

And I just wanted to show you this video and to show you the technique that I use .

So we're not really using an outline of the face .

We're sort of drawing from from inside from the centre core .

And we're finding the edges and finding the outline shapes later on .

And that can give , um , a lot of confidence , perhaps to you , hopefully that if you trust what you're doing , what you see , then in your drawing , it might just turn out .

OK , um , so that confidence level can really be increased by basing it on an artist's work which is of such high quality like Michelangelo .

Anyway , I hope that you enjoy this drawing , and I hope you have a go too .

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Thank you very much for watching and see you next time .

Bye bye .