Draw a Face in Proportion - front view

Hello .

My name is Paul Priestley and I go into schools and teach Children how to draw and paint .

This is my website .

This video is the first of two and how to draw the human face .

In this video , I shall demonstrate how to get the proportions of face correct teachers .

These exercises are easy to demonstrate Children and can be used with young primary school Children as well as all the secondary school students .

OK , let's make a start .

Firstly , we need a face , a finger and the sun .

We need to do a little bit of measuring .

First of all , I'm going to put my finger between my eyes , my thumb underneath my chin .

If I put my thumb where my finger was , you'll see that my eyes are halfway down my head .

Secondly , if I put my finger and thumb either side of my eye and move it in between my eyes , you'll find the gap between the eyes is the same width as one eye .

Now if I close my eyes , put my fingers on my pupil turn it 90 degrees size my nose .

OK , so the pupils equal the size of the nose now if I take that same measurement the nose move it down down to my chin , nose to chin , same width as one nose .

If I take the nose , turn my head 90 degrees .

You can see the ears , same level , same size as my nose .

If I put my finger on the top of my head here , press drag it down the side of my face , goes into the temple out of the cheekbone , down around to the chin and finally work out the width of the mouth .

Put your fingers on the pupils .

Close your mouth .

Don't smile .

Pupils , Same width as a mouth .

OK , we've now learnt how to use those measurements .

Let's see if we can put them into practise .

So the Children are all sitting nicely .

You're ready to demonstrate and here we go .

We start by getting the Children to measure approximately halfway down their paper and halfway down their paper .

They're going to draw a very , very faint line across the paper .

We're then going to draw the two eyes now with young Children , we just draw two simple oval shapes , not too small .

So we draw the first oval shape This to represent the eye So one oval shape And remember we did the measuring .

So we know where the second eye is going to start and we make the other eye the similar sort of size .

OK , there we are .

So we've got two eyes which are approximately the same size .

Now we need to just make sure the eyes look a little bit more like eyes .

So we'll just do two semi circles to create the eyes .

And we'll put a pupil in the centre by just doing a little circle but not quite completing it .

You'll see why we do .

We do that later on .

OK , we measure the two pupils turn a hand round that gives us the size of the nose so we can mark where the nose is going to be OK .

We start now with just turning two hockey sticks just down the side .

Here , Children can draw hockey sticks , two nice simple shapes , so go around the top of the eyebrow down the side of the nose .

As we come around here , we want to make sure that the we go narrower at the top and slightly wider as we come down the nose .

OK , at the bottom Here we draw a circle very , very faintly .

We've got a very faint circle .

And then either side of the circle , we draw a semi circle one here and one here , not quite touching .

All we need to do now is to draw around this semi circle around the bottom of the circle there and around that circle , and we have the basic shape of the nose .

Now , if you remember , we then took this measurement here the size of the nose , and we took it down .

That gives us where the chin will be , So we'll just mark where the chin will be .

And in between here and here is the mouth .

Now to draw the mouth , I'm going to come down just above halfway and I'm not going to draw the lips .

I'm going to draw the gap between the mouth .

So I'm going to start with a very simple curve shape , a simple curve shape like that , and then a curve going in the opposite direction on that side and won that side .

And if you remember , the mouth is the same width as a pupil .

Make this one slightly longer There .

OK , Now the top of the mouth is exactly the same as this .

So we just draw this again , little curve up here , curve down .

Don't quite meet , but we don't need to worry about that .

And a nice single curve running along the bottom there .

So we have a basic mouth shape underneath the mouth .

Then we find that we have a little curve going this way where the skin attaches to , uh , jawbone .

And then underneath that we have the chin .

So very simply , we got our basic shape .

Now , if you remember , we put a finger then on the side of the face and we pressed in very hard .

Well , press hard .

And we go into the temple out for the cheekbone , down and round until we reach the chin .

We do exactly the same the other side .

So we start to the same place , the other side .

We go in slightly out for the cheekbone , down and round for until we reach the chin .

OK , so we've got our basic face , the bottom part of the face to get the top part of the face .

We go back to what we did right at the beginning with the measuring .

Take our two fingers , finger and thumb here and we move it up .

And that will give us the top of the head , which is approximately there now , the top of the head .

When we draw this bit , the Children will always burst out laughing because the figure will end up looking a little bit like an alien , but just very , very loosely .

Nice big curve on the top Here .

You don't need to be too careful because we're going to go over this with hair in a moment .

So we just go a nice big curve on the top of the head There .

There we go .

So we've got that nice drawn curve .

We're going to go over that shortly .

Now we need to draw some ears .

If you remember , the ears are the same size as the nose , and they're opposite the nose .

So the ears start here you go down the side of the face and around and similarly on the other side and and finish off round about there .

The neck don't make the neck too narrow .

If you take the corner of the mouth as a guide and we put a line approximately here going off to the shoulders Approximately here , Coming down here , going off to the shoulders .

The shoulders are obviously much wider than this , but we'll not worry about that for the moment .

OK , if we go back to the hair now , assuming this is a young boy , well , we'll just do a very simple hairstyle for this .

Uh , if you imagine that , be halfway between there and there would be where the hairline would be .

OK , that would be where the hairline would be .

But we're going to come a little bit below that and assume the boy has got a fringe , so we can just do a little jagged line coming along here .

There we go , down in front of the ears again , A little jaded line cross here and down in front of the ears , assuming the hair is standing above the skull .

Then we might have a few little little bits of hair sticking up here , perhaps , and the hair would come around above the skull here , right round to the back and similarly over this side .

Now , now , now we have the hair looking more or less or the head looking more or less in proportion now to just to finish off the head .

We're going to do a little bit of , uh , drawing of the hair rather just scribbling the hair in What we're going to do is to draw a straight line down there , and we're going to then radiate all the lines for the hair from the same place .

And by doing this , it will make the head look a little bit more three dimensional .

You see , the hair is all coming down from that centre point from the crown .

You can actually do this with the Children and get them to look at their own crowns or somebody else's and see all the hair radiating out from the crown .

So we then , by the time we've finished this , we have a face that looks in proportion .

As you can see , the next step , which we'll look at in video two , is now adding light and shade to this to make it look a little bit more like a real person .

Thank you for watching