How To Draw Simple Heads - Drawing for Beginners

In this episode , I'm going to talk a bit about how to draw heads and portraits and maybe just block them in simply from different angles , different viewpoints and something to help with .

This is a little thing I have here .

Well , kind of a life size head almost .

And uh it's basically just to help show you different angles and stuff , you know , like I was talking about in the previous episode , but blocking in objects how different methods and techniques you can use were drawing only straight lines .

This kind of really shows you what I'm talking about here , you know , breaking down these angles rather than doing a curve .

Um So this is a , this is a helpful tool that I have so I can turn it from any angle , I can put any kind of light on it for shading and stuff like that .

But really what I want to talk about is just different ways to draw ahead very quickly .

Just the overall shape .

We can talk a little bit about where the features are and kind of some rough guidelines .

They're not really strict rules you follow , they're just very general guidelines that you can follow , you know , if you're making up your own characters or something , something to play around with .

But every , every person is different , you know , they have different , slightly different proportions to stuff .

And I do some sketching a bit show you just some basic concepts of how to begin this .

And uh later on in the series , we can go a little bit more in depth about really talking about facial structure and proportions and stuff to really get a likeness or something closer to a likeness .

But for now , just wanna do very , very , very basic head construction type of uh drawings , very simple uh thing .

So let's do it .

Let's get into it .

All right , as I've said in previous videos , I'm using a brush pen just so that it's easier for you to see rather than a pencil , but definitely use a pencil to feel more comfortable with that .

Uh So right away , I want to start with just some of the basic views .

Obviously , we have like a profile view straight on view and maybe like a three quarter or something .

So one of the main ways to start out with any kind of head is to start out with a circle or maybe a slightly oval shape .

Um That's really one of the easiest simplest ways .

So I'm gonna do that here , just gonna lightly sketch this in some kind of circle shape like that .

And now we don't really know this could be any view , this could be straight on looking at us .

Uh You know , it could be anything .

So what's gonna decide the way that it's facing is where you draw the uh a vertical line .

And that's really gonna , we want that to be like the middle center of the face .

So let's say this portrait is looking straight at the viewer .

Um So we'd want to draw a vertical line down the center of the face .

So basically the eyes would be here , nose , mouth , et cetera .

We can kind of build , build down from this circle , some lines like this coming down .

So this is the side of the side of the face and then the jaw comes down .

And I'm , I'm really guesstimating this , it's better to draw this kind of stuff from life or from a photo .

And I'm kind of guessimate looking at this head that I have over here and the ears , ears connect out here somewhere , you know , feature .

I don't want to get too in depth into the features , but you guys can start to see how easy it is to , to make some kind of face or head shape by starting out with a circle .

Let's do one more real quickly here .

And this is a lot of fun .

I mean , you can , you can draw so many of these and just by changing the location of this vertical line .

So if I make the vertical line over here , now we can see it changes the entire viewpoint .

Um because let's say the nose is coming down here and then the jaw is gonna come down something like this connect there and this is the back of the head , et cetera , neck ear here .

You know , it's not perfect , of course , but very quickly getting a head shape just by drawing a circle .

So if we just do a bunch of these start out with a very rough circle , it doesn't have to be perfect .

Like I said , you're just sketching , you're just playing around .

Um especially when you're just starting out , let's say we draw it this way , draw this vertical line .

Uh So now we have more of a three quarters view .

So now the the ear kind of where the ear is gonna be is over here and the other ear , you're not even gonna be able to see it because this is the side of the head back here .

The ear is kind of behind the head so the ear can come down here , jaw comes down , et cetera , something like that .

And you have the eyes coming across eyebrows , nose mouth very loose .

It's not perfect , like I said , not perfect , but this is , this is just basic concepts to help you start uh these different views and what also we can do because all these are from eye level .

So now we can kind of change the view point .

That's a really messy circle .

There .

So let's say , let's say we want to look down or up at a face .

So how do we , how do we figure that out ?

It's definitely a good question .

So now the vertical line is gonna change a bit if we're looking , let's say this is mostly the top of the head , kind of the ears are here and now we're just looking .

So what you'd have is the eyes are about right here .

The nose coming down the nose kind of sticking out and in the face coming like this .

So this is the , we're seeing mostly the top of the head here .

I hope that makes sense .

So we're looking down on the head that can be a little bit tricky and this is where it's good to have some kind of model or take some photos .

And that's why I have this head over here .

I'm kind of just looking at it , changing some of the viewing angles and stuff .

So I have this head if I want to look down on it , you know , the eyes are going to be a lot lower on the head and the the features are going to be a little more squish , the eyes aren't going to be way up here , going down , lower , something like this .

You're gonna see less face , you're gonna see more , more of the ear here , less face nose coming out .

I hope you guys get the idea .

If you , if you start out with a simple circle and you just change where you're putting this kind of cross mark for the eye eye or eyebrows and then the the center line for the face that really should , you know , that shows you where you're looking from .

Um So I'll give you some examples like this is obviously , so say this is the outline of the eyebrows or the eye and then this is that center line .

So this is actually you're looking straight on uh or it could be , it could be this one as well if you have the eye eyes here .

But as soon as you start changing kind of the orientation where the eyes are , you can already start to see a difference in in which way it's facing , which way it's looking .

So stuff like this and and like down here , you know , it's completely different , it's smaller , it's not as long .

So if that makes sense , this kind of cross mark is , is a good indicator , you know , because you always start out if you're just starting out with a circle depending on where you put this cross mark .

So let's say we have the center line of the face there and the cross mark is kind of curving like this .

So now we're looking more like we're beneath the head .

So the jar is gonna be something like this and then the ears are over here coming out , eyes are here and noses triangle of the nose , the mouth , et cetera .

It's kind of very rough .

But I think you guys get the , get the idea of this , that , that one's really , really rough .

But basically you would see the more of the neck you're looking , you know , this is underneath the chin here .

So this is like all in shadow .

So you're looking up at the person opposite of this one .

But yeah , I mean , this takes a lot of practice and definitely use photos or a model or something , whatever you can starting out with that basic basic circle , basic shape .

That's what's gonna uh be very useful in this early stage of just learning to draw portraits .

You know , you take a selfie of yourself and different look in different views .

Um And then you can start building on that and you can start doing just profiles and try to figure out like , OK , where is the ear compared to the rest of the head ?

You know , usually it's like a little almost in the center , usually something like that , the jaw comes down a little bit underneath the , the ear and then it just swoops down and you kinda , you kinda straightens out right there and the nose comes down about right here and the eyes are usually sat in a bit , something like that mouth , blah , blah , blah , you know , I don't want to get too much into the features .

There's a lot , there's , you know , there's certain measurements that you can take .

Usually it's like a third blah , blah , there's different measurements from the hairline to the eyes , eyes to the bottom of the nose , bottom of the nose , to the bottom of the chin , et cetera .

You know , there's all these different measurements we'll get into that later , but just start out just playing , playing around with constructing heads very quickly and just get used to sketching , get used to having fun with this , playing around like , OK , how many different views can I make , you know if , if you see that something is kind of off with them , then try to redraw it or try to find a photo online that has that kind of view and see like what you're doing wrong , but just play around .

Don't get , you know , you don't have to get too detailed about it in the beginning , you know , just draw basic heads like that .

Uh very basic , put some neck lines there , whatever shoulders , et cetera , you know , you start building on this , but I didn't , I didn't want to make this too complicated because we're in the very beginning stages still , you know , we just learned how to draw , you know , very basic stuff .

So , but uh I wanted to give you something a little more fun to play around with .

So hopefully , this helps you just understand a little bit of the basic concepts for drawing heads , portraits faces , just constructing this stuff .

Like I said , breaking it down using that , that circle .

Um And from there , you know , if you , if you need to , to fix , fix stuff , you can use straight lines to kind of fix some angles , you know , like OK , this needs to come down a little bit more or this needs to come out .

You know , you can start playing around with those other techniques for blocking in things , but uh keep it loose , keep it fun , keep it simple .

You're just learning to draw now .

So uh don't complicate it too much but hope this helps you out .

I'll see you in the next episode .

Peace , my friends .