Tutorial - 2 ways to start a face!

Hello .

So Hunter Kay on Snapchat asks , he's having trouble drawing faces .

So he's wondering how to draw faces out of sort of thin air , you know , and he asks , is it easier to start with , uh , a facial feature , like an eye or a nose or mouth ?

Because some people do that , some artists like to kind of start with one place and then grow out of it .

Um by adding shapes and then he's asking if that's easier than to draw on top of in a , a sketch or a frame or like kind of like a , a wire frame situation .

Uh So what I'm gonna do is show kind of how to approach it both ways and why each way uh could be either easier .

Well , not easier , maybe just it will have different results .

So let's get into it .

OK .

So the first approach , I'm going to draw a , an outline or a kind of an underlay sketch , uh It's making a layer so as you can see it's not a perfect face , but it's just an underlying construction .

And then you can see , uh using a , a frame or an an underlay , uh I established uh a line here for the , for the eyes to line up on and then a line here for the symmetry .

So if I was to draw something here , I can uh kind of eyeball where it would be in perspective , going to the other side .

Um Same thing with the mouth and a nose .

And if you've seen my other tutorials about like what , what the placement is for those things , uh you'll find that they line up in a very specific way .

Um So that's the advantage so far for uh drawing , using an uh an underlay .

Um because you sort of map things out , you , you have it kind of established , you , you , you don't have to worry about coming up with things on the spot .

Um And let's just take this a bit further and then we'll move on to the next part in honor of the month of May being Anna May anime .

I'm sort of doing this in a slightly anime style .

Um sort of keeping up on my promise and I've made a lot of , by the way , apologies , I've made a lot of promises and it didn't really fulfill them yet .

Like I , I forget , I forget things a lot .

So , um I think there was like an orc tutorial that I still have to put up .

Um If there's anything else I forgot , just remind me in the comments so I can kind of uh put them on the back log and as a reminder , um , something about anime Eyes , uh , when I was , uh putting together some research for that , I was like , what kind of anime do I like ?

Because there's , you know , there's this new wave of anime which has like , uh , this , you know , a whole range of styles .

But if you look back at , you know , I guess , from Pokemon to Sailor Moon all the way to like Miyazaki Ghibli studio stuff .

Uh It has a kind of classic feel to it and , and I guess I'm drawn more to that , but at the same time , uh there's a fascination with semi realism that has a , a foundation in anime .

So like the anime proportions of faces , sort of like what I'm doing now .

Um Kind of obviously this is not realistic , nobody has an eye that large .

Uh But when you render it , they could , you know , have that realistic look .

So it has that really appealing style that's really popular , but it'll , it'll go out of style soon .

That's just the way it is .

But uh while it is in style , while it is still something impressive , it might be something uh I'll try , I mean , not , not to say that it's about um uh the audience or , you know , caring too much about , you know , just do whatever you like , do whatever is fun .

All right .

So here we go at this .

All right .

So that's the first approach .

Uh the second approach would be trying to draw a face by starting with an I .

And like we said , the advantage of the , the advantages of this was to kind of um have a foundation for uh symmetry , the overall shape , you know , this would be the symmetry , the whole shape .

You can kind of know what your bounds are in terms of uh what you're going to be drawing within .

And so there's a lot , there's sort of this uh less of a burden of figuring out where things will go .

So starting with a plan , you can end up with something like that .

Um And this next one , I'll be trying to draw without uh a uh a sketch or an underlay uh by starting with the specific part and then letting it grow and by grow , I mean , uh adding the next part like , you know , you start with an eye , you wouldn't go from the eye and then start the fingernail , right ?

Um You would sort of connect them by uh letting the shapes happen , right ?

This next approach would be using uh or , or not using a uh what's it called ?

All right .

So you could start with the nose , right ?

But , or the mouth or the eye , but usually people uh doing this approach would start with the eye .

So let's just do that and see how it goes .

Um So with this , it's like it could be anything the , the , the rest of it , we don't know , there's no plan .

Uh And that's sort of like uh this organic process here .

Um sort of lends to the idea of uh kind of allowing the creativity to happen uh without a plan .

Um And because of that , you might yield something unexpected um versus the other approach where you're trying to fit exactly the , the , the frame or the under drawing uh based on the , the anatomy or , or um or any kind of guidelines that you might have learned .

Uh So it's kind of constrained if you go the other way , but this way allows to like kind of uh explore and maybe come up with different shapes like , uh although I do have in mind those same uh similar proportions , you know , like , I know that the , the , the , the nose isn't gonna be down here , right ?

I mean , we could , it would just look weird .

Oh my God , uh the mustache and uh oh God .

Well , Mr Thornberry M Thornberry .

Um OK , I have to keep going with this just for a minute .

See , that's the type of creativity that you might stumble upon as ridiculous as it might be .

Um OK , I'm gonna erase that anyway .

But , but I know that uh the nose that I want isn't down that far .

It's , you know , it's somewhere around this area , you know , I could even like put a scribble here .

Um And one might be like , dude , why are you scribbling man ?

This is not cool .

Um But dude , this , this kind of like a , a cool uh underlay of what could be a nose .

And then if I use white , you know , I could just kind of paint on the top side of the nose and look , now we have like a sketchy uh knows the situation going there , but I'm going to just go ahead and not do that right now .

Um It's back to dark .

So , yeah , that , that's the kind of um advantage uh uh and , and freedom that you have when you're just like starting for one spot and letting things grow up .

But it's , you , it's not easy to do unless you already know the , the parts of the face .

So , um because uh like I said , you , you kind of know that there's these kind of distances between each part and if you didn't practice that over doing this kind of stuff , then you're not going to um you're gonna have a hard time trying to nail things down uh with this method and , and there's like thousands of methods of drawing , there's no one set way .

These are just two different approaches um based on a question that I got .

And uh I figured I could just answer it better by showing instead of responding via Snapchat text .

So , in a way , this is almost as if I'm drawing an underlay uh or um a plan for , for like another pass .

But the difference is I'm not doing the whole like measuring lines and lining things up and making sure because then it starts to get rigid .

Um and almost formulaic .

Not that it's a bad thing .

But uh like if I'm sketching my sketchbook , I'm definitely going this approach because I don't really care to uh go along perfect .

Uh Well , not perfect but like plans uh lines or , or kind of signs .

Let's uh rotate this .

And so if I'm drawing uh the rest of the head , this is , this might be troubling for other people because it's like , where does the head end ?

Like ?

Is it , is it like a big circle ?

Right ?

Is the head really that big ?

Um And where does the ear go ?

Does it go up here ?

No , it doesn't .

Um But since I've drawn enough skulls in my time , you know , come on .

So if here's uh eye socket , eye socket , nose , cheekbone , cheekbone , the barrel of the mouth with the teeth and you got the jaw is a very crude , inaccurate skull .

But I can sort of guess where the back of the skull is gonna go .

Um Because I know that there's a Zygomatic arch that comes here below .

But anyway , uh so it creates this , this groove here and that groove sort of like starts to indicate where the , the , the back of the skull stops , then you have these like sutures and lines and whatnot .

But um so that's actually another recommendation .

I can give , if you want to draw heads uh from uh thin air or uh out of imagination is to understand the skulls .

Because if you know the skull , you also know where the neck goes .

Um We often have the mistake of drawing the neck , you know , like that coming down and out of the job .

But really , um if you look at the side view of a skull , um this is a very crude skull .

Here's the cranium , here's the mouth or the teeth or whatever .

Uh , the , the spine kind of comes out like this or , you know , the neck bones .

So it sort of rests on a hinge like about right there .

Um So in perspective on this thing , it's , it's like almost if we , if we draw on the lips as a cylinder , it kind of comes up like that and it starts to act as where the nose might go .

And if you know anatomy a little bit further , you know , that the , the neck muscles , the sternal clio mastoid , uh , as it connects to the sternum , I know we're getting really complicated here .

Uh , goes from behind the ear and all the way down to that and then you start to have a body .

Anyway , that's a crude anatomy one on one .

Anyway , thanks for watching .

And I'm glad you watched , uh , also Hunter , thanks for asking a question about faces .

Uh , so that we could , uh , share this with people and , uh , uh , another news .

I did start a Patreon .

Um , it's nothing , uh , solid right now .

Uh , right now it's just , um , if , if anybody wants to support the channel , but soon I will have it set up so that we will be giving out , uh , you know , things along the way , you know , it's probably gonna be P sds , um , extra insights and tutorials and stuff .

Um , but I will always be doing youtube stuff .

So , don't worry , I'm not gonna disappear .

Um At least that's the plan for now .

And uh if you'd like to help me out there , you know , the link is in the description .

Um And uh also the sketch fit thing will be announced very soon who the winners are for the uh challenge .

Um It's really fun .

A lot of people to be uh uh judging there's a lot of entrance .

Um So let's see how that goes anyway .

Uh You all have a great day .

I'm just gonna put a couple more highlights on this and then uh about a , about a boom .

I'm not gonna make any promises about coming back to color this later because I will probably forget um There's too many highlights anyway .

OK .

So , um yeah , thanks for tuning in and I will see you all very soon .

Uh Click , let's see .

Click .