The Best Way To Sketch Any Face

By Author: Ruediger Schmidt
Total Articles: 35
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I've met numerous beginning artists who wish to start right from nothing and draw a portrait of a person they know or someone popular. Drawing great portraits is much like the holy grail of sketching. Generating realistic and living portraits requires a top skill level next to mastery. Thankfully you are able to learn these skills easier, if you learn them individually.

The first thing is studying to draw the diverse features in the human face. By separating single features and sketching them individually you are able to learn faster. You will concentrate on rigorously practising one characteristic at a time. So that you transform your comprehending and familiarity with the details. Fill several sheets of paper with eyes, noses etc and you'll get a sense how they look and ways in which to draw them. But do not draw too small. A couple of eyes, mouths or noses on one sheet (A4 or letter sized). That leaves you enough room for details.

The next phase usually means arranging all one has mastered when sketching the features one at a time. It's important to position the facial features in right proportions, distances ...
... and layout so they really fit together and the big picture makes sense. So what's the right layout? There are many rules that provide help to position the features on the right locations:

* The eyes are located midway between the top of the head and the chin. This is probably the most crucial lessons to understand when sketching portraits. A lot of (me, too) are inclined to position the eyes too high, hence the portrait gets a flat forehead. It looks like it's some optical illusion that makes us assume the eyes are placed higher than they are.

* Another problem with the eyes is their positioning to the left and the right. Between them there should be adequate room for exactly one more eye. Exactly the same to the left and right - between each eye and the edge of the face is adequate room for one more eye. In general a individual face has adequate room for five eyes in a row (although this would look rather odd).

* As we are inserting so many eyes into one face, let's add two more. Now they will help us to put the eyebrows where they belong. The distance between the eyebrows and the eyes is equivalent to the eyes' height

* Then the underside of the nose is located midway between the eyes and the chin

* Midway between chin and nose is the mouth

* The mouth's corners can be found below the center of the eyes. But can easily vary a lot with there being many individuals with broader or less wide mouths

* The ears' top starts where the eyebrows are and their bottom part may line up with the bottom part of the nose. But these measures can vary as everyone has many diversely sized and shaped ears.

Using these rules you are going to be able to position the facial features the right way. But constantly consider: these measures and locations are idealized! Actually these measures will vary somewhat. That's what makes up the individuality of the human face.

And that is what the most important ability for portrait sketching is all about. You should get good at this 3 rd ability to draw portraits that appear like the original model. Each individual face has its individuality and looks unique. There's two causes of this:

* First the face features by itself vary somewhat by form, color or size (for instance wide vs. thin noses, thick vs. thin lips, etc.)

* Second, the layout of the face features differs somewhat from the idealized measures I revealed you previously. The eyes can take a position a bit less wide, the chin may be stronger or weaker. Finally this changes the entire layout of the face and gives it individuality and originality.

The key for sketching resembling and live like portraits is to catch these negligible variances and bring them to paper. This requires a lot practice and a skilled eye. But the more portraits you draw the better you will definately get and the more resembling your portraits will look.

So what on earth do you think you're waiting for? Start sketching portraits!
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