05: Drawing The Head
In this tutorial I will give some basic rules to follow when drawing the head and face, and a few examples of how to draw things from your head. To start, the basic shape of the head is an oval, or rectangle. I like to start with a circle for the skull, then ad another curve so that it looks like an upside down egg. Next I draw a line down the center of the head, and one line to intersect it (roughly in the center as well). The head is roughly 5 eyes wide, so if you divide the horizontal center line into 5 equal parts you should have proportionate eyes, as well as proper spacing between each eye, and the side of the head. the nose lies about halfway between the eyes and the chin, and with my method of drawing a circle first this usually lines up with the bottom of the circle. The mouth is a little less than halfway between the nose and the chin. The top of the ears line up with the eyebrows, and the bottom with the nose. Lastly, the hairline usually falls in the top quarter of the head.
By drawing these lines I have a pretty good guide to help me get the proportions correct. After that you can add the details. The order isn't really important, and I usually, start by drawing the eyes, but this time I drew the outline of the head, and the hair. You will also notice that the cheek bones will line up with and follow the bottom part of the circle (another reason I like to start with it). The profile (or side) of the head follows the same general rules, but you will notice some differences. First of course is the jaw line, which will start from the center of the skull and extend to meet the front of the face. The eyes won't be as simple to got correct, but if you draw a triangle shape that meets the edge of the circle you should have a good starting point.
Now below is an example of the same method used to draw a woman's face. Notice that I draw the jaw line a bit softer, thinner eyebrows, darker lines on the eyes (to indicate lashes), lighter nose features, and of course the lips and hair.
Below is an example of how I draw eyes. You can see that the eye is a sphere, and the eyelids wrap around the eyeball. The top eyelid will extend a little bit past the point where the lower eyelid appears to connect. This helps give the illusion of eyelashes without drawing each one (which looks really bad usually). Also note that the iris and pupil are slightly covered by the top (or bottom) eyelid. If you don't they eyes will look surprised or scared. From the side the eye takes a triangular shape, and the eyelids follow the same rules. Once the eyes are too small to draw all the details you need to simplify it, notice the one example below.
Next some examples of the nose. Some general rules I follow are: Start with the nostrils, only draw/shape one side of the bridge, don't connect all the lines. Remember, our minds eye will connect things that look like they should be connected, so just indicate the major turns in the skin/nose, and let the imagination do the rest.
To finish, here are some examples of how to draw the mouth. When drawing a man's mouth, you usually only want to draw the upper lip, and maybe hint at a lower lip. A woman's lips should be drawn out to make them look full. Notice the little things, like the indents at the sides of the mouth, how the creases lead to the nose, muscles in the frown. Also, when drawing teeth, don't draw each individual tooth, just indicate the teeth with the gum line, and draw some lines to show the teeth that turn into the mouth.
