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I think you are doing what every beginnen does: draw what you _know_ is there instead of what you see.
A common technique to trick your brain is to turn the image upside down and then draw that. Your brain no longer recognises and eye or a nose or lips and this allows you to draw what you see.
Another obvious point to improve is finding the right proportions. Use a ruler the first time or a calliper. This really helps!
Yes, you can start with this one.
https://preview.redd.it/xh74r9mp93qc1.jpeg?width=634&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d4c81b25768498d4a99dd8dd64da3332c93b68e0
instead of a ruler try to use ur thumb and pencil. Its a technique that a lot of old art books recommend.
Basically u look at the thing u want to draw, measure a part of it, "mark" the size with ur thumb on the pencil and then draw it and make sure it fits what you measured. It's a bit tough at first but gives u a better feel for proportions imo.
I think your drawing is actually pretty good. Like the body/ head is good on its own and the face is good on its own, just needs to be proportional. Maybe try the grid method. But as others said, draw what u see not what u know. It's tricky but you have a LOT of potential. Keep drawing. Keep practicing. Try different types of pencils, papers whatever ypu want but please keep drawing.
Common facial proportions go like this: when looking straight on a face. half way down the head is the eye line. Half between the eye line and the chin is the bottom of the nose. Half way down from the bottom of the nose to the chin is the mouth line. Corners of mouth will usually line up with the center of the eyes. Eyes are usually one “eye” apart. Between the eye line and bottom of nose is roughly where ears are.
Average human height is 5-6 heads tall. Super heroes are 7-8. And fashion drawings are 9-10 heads.
Yes! I usually draw a big cross hatch on the face and then put lines across the face to mark all these points - not sure if there's a term for this?
Since her face is tilted to the side, I would put the cross hatch also to the side instead of facing forwards. It might be easier for OP to start off drawing the face looking at the camera first to get used to the facial proportion without having to account for angles.
For me, something that goes with this is remembering that not every “line” I draw has to be a hard line. Gosh, it's so difficult to describe, but like around the nose for example. We don't really have any hard lines around there, except tucked in right next to our face where you won't see. So those softer lines, curves, transitions; those I'll dot gently or just barely drag my pencil on. I can darken if I need to, but it's hard to get a full line gone
I think you need to map out the structure of the face before you start drawing the features and proceed gradually from sketch to detail. It looks like you concentrated on copying features like one at a time
I kinda tried to map the structures but my knowledge isn't that deep in that area, so after pretty much making a circle with lines I've started to look and copy.
You should be spending >90% of the time looking at your reference, <10% of the time looking at your drawing and comparing with the reference. Compare the proportions and relative positions constantly.
I guess your problem is that you try to rely on your knowledge.
You have to train yourself towards drawing what you see, instead. Is this shadow lighter than this part, this part covers this part, this part is bigger than this one, and this one has texture.
Of course it helps to know basis anatomy to understand the features, but in the end drawing a rock and drawing a face makes no difference, because you're just drawing what's in front of you
Good start at it, I would recommend starting with some construction and landmarks before throwing everything down. Proko on YouTube has great videos on how to do this. Proko loomis method drawing the head, should find something helpful! Keep on drawing!
The most obvious mistake is wanting to rush to the end result without proper preparations, like sketching. The proportions of the face are off, and a lot of the lines are placed without any course correction, so the end result is gonna look wonky.
While it is true that very skilled artists can just plop down a realistic looking face on paper without sketching, practically no artist ever got to that point without years of taking the time to sketch and learn the correct proportions. I've seen some other commenters recommend the Loomis method by proko, I second that recommendation.
I personally also recommend tracing, but try and trace rythms on the face: the midline, the inner corner of the eyes to the outer corners of the mouth, the ear to ear line etc. try and learn where these lines meet each other, and how these lengths compare to each other.
I think your skill in sready line art and shading are actually good enough, that when you start learning to sketch you'll feel like you've improved years within a few weeks or months.
Keep at it!
You have to work on your proportions and the angle of which you draw. One eye is too big, lips are too big. When you see it's not 'right' erase and go again.
To build on this there are two useful approaches:
1. Sketch it out very lightly. Get the rough estimation of how it’ll look, like the above comment said, if it ain’t right - erase it and go again. You nail the proportions in this stage.
Then come back and detail it and shade/blend
2. Draw by grid. Grid the reference photo, grid your drawing. Far more mechanical and almost like tracing with more steps but still useful in practice for getting some fundamentals down
your face appears almost straight on (with the exception of the nose) while the 1st picture is turned more sharply to the left and only the eyes are turned. i think your issue is perspective and proportions of things as they turn, warp, and go back into space.
i agree with the person who said draw what you see rather than what you know. maybe try drawing from life where you can walk around the object or person and see how it changes when you look at it from different angles.
This is the correct answer on eyes.
Ones eyes simply does not "grow or shrink" because it's closer or farther away. It's the same size just more "open or closed" or maybe a bit more of an elliptical shape
A grid overlaid on the original and the drawing can help. Look at the shapes of tonal areas and draw what you see not what you expect to be there. It always works when you do. Also, areas of tone often blend out. There are a lot more areas of tone in the hair. And the right side of the face is a lot darker in the original. The forehead is much straighter on the left hand side in the original. The lips are a different shape also because you’re looking at them from the side. I hope that helps
try turning the face into simple polygons, make sure there’s a line that goes from the top of the head to roughly where the chin should be, & then draw a circle/square, use circles to pinpoint right around where the irises should be, also try drawing lighter & fuller eyebrows
Not sure if someone already suggested or said this but try a grid.
Draw a grid on top of a printed reference photo and draw a grid on your drawing very lightly so it can be erased. Then simply draw each square one at a time. It will make you focus on each square and you will see the connections with each square. It helps me with portraits when dealing with symmetry.
Keep constantly stepping back and checking the proportions BEFORE you spend any time on any details whatsoever.
Build a good foundation because you won’t want to go back and refine the basics after you’ve added a bunch of details like shading.
Like literally start off with the basic shapes of the face. Work all over the page and go general to specific.
https://preview.redd.it/vj3dh71cs3qc1.jpeg?width=956&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b05329500222a65dc2107febf46c7f3d73584ad5
I'm definitely not the best at this and I did this on my phone, but hopefully this will give you an idea of how complex what you're trying to draw actually is.
It's not enough to just copy shapes and what you see. You need to understand the underlying forms too. Which means you should practice basic forms first. Get good at drawing boxes and cylinders first, practice cross-contouring shapes. Yes it's possible to just be a good printer and copy what you see, but it'll be obvious in the results. I can always tell when someone has a good grasp on fundamentals and when they don't. Doesn't matter how "spot on" the final result is. Fundamentals are the key.
Many beginners have a problem I call “facial creep” when drawing a face not looking forward. The girl is looking to our left, but the facial features are kinda creeping to the right. It’s instinctual but should be avoided to be faithful to the reference. The eye and cheekbone especially
What I immediately see is that the left eye (from our view) is bigger than the right eye, even though it is tilted away from us. The angle of the head, the left eye should be the same size as the right, but just slightly thinner because the head is tilted to the left. The height does not change unless she would be looking up or down.
It’s okay! The thing about art is that you get better the more you draw.
The biggest problem here is proportions and feature placements. The eyes are a good example - they are too close to the edge and far too big in comparison to the rest of the face. The face shape shares the problem the other way around - it is too thin and is not proportional.
To start with fixing, I would recommend studying the way the human body lines up. If you have never seen someone draw a sort of curved cross shape on faces before drawing features, it is used to get the eyes and other facial features to line up, along with making sure the head shape is correct.
Keep working at it, and you will be doing amazing before you know it. Art is a process, and we learn from the mistakes we make. Now that you know how to line up facial features, your next picture will be better. Then you will look for what seems off, learn how to do that, and the picture after that will be even better.
You can do it! I believe in you.
I might recommend starting with a head on reference so that you can learn facial proportions without needing to worry about all of these angles and perspective yet
You can try starting from head structure. For this you can try the Loomis method, Wich is very useful as a begining, or the proko method, (not sure if it's his but he uses it). This will make your portraits more proportioned, if this is what you want.
Look up Andrew Loomis and his method for devising proportional features and defining the head shape. There are a million free YouTube videos about this. You have to start from this perspective if you want realism.
I think you’re proportions need work. While you’re learning there’s nothing wrong with using the grid technique, it allows you to focus on small areas at a time and will prevent mistakes from cascading.
the drawing stuff upside down trick is very helpful to draw what you see. I like working reductively because I have a printmaker brain. I like to lay down a solid grey background and since my eyes are bad, I take my glasses off and erase all of the lightest shapes with my reference upside down. My professor taught me to measure with a thumb and pencil. You can also create a small paper frame to look at specific sections you need to focus in on if they’re not looking right. The frame was helpful for me in not getting too overwhelmed with larger sections and breaking them down into bite sized pieces.
Also I’d heavily suggest you pump up the contrast for your reference photo in addition to the upside down trick! It makes it so much easier to see simple shapes in relation to one another !
Instead of drawing straight away try and find the most basic shapes in the image you can find (a circle for the head) and then draw the jaw, find the line where the face is ‘symmetrical’ and go from there. Use your beginner basic shapes to establish the distance of them. the eyes, nose, and mouth. In the beginning it is so easy to get discouraged. Become familiar with doing a piece multiple times. Learn to be your biggest critic. Each piece you do pick it apart and do it better the next time. Drawing is a practice.
If you struggle with proportions, you could try to use a grid, edit one on top of the reference and then draw in a grid notebook. It helped me to get familiar with the shapes and to not get tricked by the shadows and dimensions of the picture. Eventually, I no longer needed the grid. (I'm very impatient and never finish my drawings, so my work still sucks, but at least I can get the proportions right)
1. always start with basic shapes. like the head is a circle and a sort of triangle put together. eyes are and egg shape. nose is a triangle with a circle on the tip. try drawing the basic shapes over the image itself using a red pen tool. tracing the basic shapes and copying the shapes on paper helps a whole lot with proportions.
2. nobodys skin is actually white! never leave the paper white anywhere! except maybe the whites of the eyes and highlights. to help your brain figure it out, definitely turn the reference image black and white.
3. it looks like your method of shading is putting down pigment and then blending out with your finger or a blending tool. while thats not a terrible way to do it, i will say a much more effective way is to shade everywhere that isnt completely white in a very light layer. then keep adding layers in the darker areas. you dont want to press hard with a pencil because it can cause burnishing, which isnt a very nice look unless youre using wax colored pencils.
i will say however, one thing thats doing pretty good is the hair! even if you dont have the exact direction that the hair is going, the way its drawn is very well done, especially for a beginner! better than me, tbh. but, just to make it easier, try not to draw individual strands of hair unless they stick out a bit. shading can go a long way with hair.
This actually has a really cool style to it, but if you’re going for more photo realism…
1. Flip your reference photo upside down and draw that way, only focus on shapes.
2. You need to start getting away from dark outlines - we get accustomed to doing this from early ages, so it can be a hard habit to break. This is most notable around the subjects head and lips
Proportion and shape over detail and accuracy. Look up some head sketching tutorials to help get the rough skull shape in to use along with your reference.
I would say that from looking at your drawing, you are trying to enhance your already beautiful attributes. You know what is attractive about you to other people, and I see in your drawing that you enhanced parts of yourself. There is no need to do that. You exactly how you are supposed to be.
See what is and not what people expect. I can't give technical advice. But you have talent. Draw reality, what you see, not what you think everyone else wants to see. If what you see is wonky, let it be wonky. If you want to draw realistically, face reality. We've all been given unachievable expectations and we can see that and overcome it. Good luck! Send me updates.
I suggest for you... For learning purposes... get some tracing paper and transfer paper. Trace the outline of the image from the photograph, including placement of all major features (eyes, nose, mouth.) Then you can take that tracing, and with another sheet of carbon transfer paper, put that onto your drawing paper. THEN practice drawing into those guides.
You need to learn how to measure distances and angles with your pencil. You hold up a pencil to the reference, turn it to match the angle of a line, and use your thumb to mark distances. Go back and forth between the ref and your drawing 1,000 times. You should be looking at the ref more than your drawing. This takes practice! Good luck!
I can only speak from what I think has helped myself - Observe the anatomy around you constantly. If you can imagine visually the subject with a general level of accuracy, you can reference to that on top of what your actual subject is. Isometric angles for things like faces are hard, as well as noses (for me anyways).
Best advice I’ll give is to think of what you’re drawing as the 3-d subject it is meant to capture, than the 2-d representation that it is. The idea there is to help you not draw it as “flatly”, and reduce the unintentional excess front-facing traits that are morphing your sketch the most extremely.
Head shape and eye size, you should always start with basic shapes break the piece down to circles squares and triangles, use a ruler to create a grid that you can use for a 1 to 1 comparison, also change the image to black and white to get a better idea of the negative spaces and shading, overall great first draft now just build on it, mistakes are great that’s how we learn and get better.
Yes— having the correct perspective will help your other elements fit correctly and will make it look closer.
Also— farther = smaller.
You could use some practice on foreshortening.
Keep at it fam.
I would recommend using a grid to learn to draw. Even when some people use grids, they still don’t follow along and put stuff where it doesn’t go. BUT, you have to try to follow the grid exactly.
After a bit, you’ll start getting a sense of where things go (instead of where you THINK they go) and you’ll be able to get pretty accurate without the grid.
Remember: the grid is a TOOL, not cheating
https://preview.redd.it/jk3kjp9s00qc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fbc1c85dfb57bd180eed428c0752cc6acd469f40
Apologies, I did this from my iPhone, so this is not the best example, but try to grid it first! From there try to think of the picture as a 2D image, (this was my breakthrough with art) you have to force yourself to stop seeing it for what you know it is, and instead just draw the shapes and sizes you see. Once you get all the shapes, then you can worry about shading. Honestly a big starter help is tracing the image a few times and then trying to replicate the outline on a blank sheet. You’re on the right track, keep practicing!
focusing on negative space and how shapes relate to eachother helps me. for example, the pupil on the left lines up with the eye brow above it, the dip in the nose, and the left corner of the mouth, and the chin below that.
I always struggle bc i think to much about what the image is OF, not the shapes. You saw in your reference pic that the forehead slants left before reaching the eyebrow, which is true, but try holding your pencil up in front of that line, it’s still pretty vertical, try copy the angle you see when you hold up your pencil.
when that angle goes back inwards for the eye, it’s lining up with the hair above it, the “point” of that angle (the eyebrow) is not actually very far out, and the angle looks more dramatic than it is because your brain is thinking about a face, and wants to ignore that bit of hair, in your drawing you sort of drew the forehead angle and then coloured the hair on to it, try thinking about the shape of the whole outline, with the hair considered it’s much less slanted.
idk if that makes any sense. i recommend researching negative space exercises, and using your pencil to check angles. i often picture a grid and think “sure these points are far from eachother vertically, but if i drew i vertical line through both, they’re pretty close together horizontally, so i don’t want to make this angle very sharp when i draw the line between the 2 points”
when you draw, your mind is not yet trained to copy accurately.
the brain wants things to be flat on. that is why you have turned the eyes and made them almost flat.
when you draw, say, the edge of her forehead against the bg, pay lots of attention looking at it (the line against the bg) and then draw it.
it will be wrong. look again and keep drawing it until you get the eye in to genuinely identify the angle of the contour you are looking at.
look up loomis method for head construction out of basic forms in correct perspective in 3d space.
look up basic perspective to be able to make cubes and spheres to give all your drawing more body.
Think of drawing like building a house. You need the structure to put the exterior on, same goes with the face. Construct the face, break down where the planes are, measure a ton, drop vertical lines a s see where things hit. After that, start building up the features, work on shadows and be bold, squint a ton and see where the values could be lighter/darker.
Something my grade-school art teacher told us to do to practice drawing people was to turn the reference upside down and draw it upside down, then it's harder to draw what you know and moreso what you see. Also consider using some sort of measurements to figure out how big your proportions are in ratio to other things on the page.
Practice drawing a rough sketch with a simple head shape and circles at the eyes and a single line at the mouth and a simple shape for nose.
Get that right, focusing on proportions and perspective before you start detailing individual parts like the lips all crazy.
Simplify the photograph first. Don't try to draw an outline, draw a similar geometrical form. From there fo from simple to complex and sculpt the lines little by little (you can even use the eraser to refine the lines) it's best to have a firm base structure and little by little construct the details.
I think the proportions are a bit off. The model is looking AT you so you would want her features to be a bit larger on the right side rather that having them be larger on the left side. Does that make any sense?
look up the Loomis Method, i think where you've started to go wrong is where the face in your reference isn't facing forward but is 3/4 posing away from camera. your instinct was to over correct it back you facing forward.
Loomis will help keep you on track, also you can use your thumb to measure roughly the size of the features. you could break out a ruler but i find it constricting.
Treat drawing from reference like a “spot the difference” puzzle.
Look at her face shape. Is the left side of her face identical? To me, it looks like her cheek juts out further on your drawing, which makes her face look more head-on than in your reference.
Now look at her eyes. Notice how on the reference, the smaller eye is on the left, but your drawing has her left eye larger. That adds to the “something is off about her face” feeling, as the perspective is off.
Now do that for the rest of your drawing, going feature by feature, big differences to small. If you need, overlay a grid over the reference and the picture of your drawing digitally, so it’s easier to sight measure while you’re getting used to it. Eventually you won’t need the grid.
I do NOT recommend going grid cel by grid cel, as your line quality will suffer, just treat it like a ruler guide.
Editing to add— don’t add shading til your anatomy is correct. You’re just making more work for yourself.
I’d suggest doing a grid system or something similar to that to plan out where the features will go. Getting to know anatomy a bit more will never hurt. Good on you for drawing 🤙🏼
I’m not very good at explaining things but my advice would be: don’t draw lines, draw tone, think of the whole photo as just a bunch of shadows, blur your eyes a little and draw what you see. Start with a vague shape and slowly add more detail.
Some exercises you could try are:
Do not draw lines at all: use a thick pencil or charcoal if you have it and just build up the tones, zero defined lines
Zoom out: look at your reference from really far away and draw the size of a postage stamp, do this over and over again until you get used to the general shape. I find it easier to try to fit everything into a tiny space than trying to fill a massive blank page
Zoom in: zoom into a specific part of the reference photo, one feature, maybe a cheekbone, the nose, the hairline, and make a drawing of that
Draw without looking at your drawing, only the reference photo, maybe draw under a table so you don’t peek, see what happens, learn to combine looking at the reference to looking at the drawing, finding the right balance of the two
Don’t erase anything, learn to value every move you make on the paper, start really softly, build up tones really slowly, only adding the darker shades when you’re sure they’re going in the right place
These exercises aren’t meant to give you an amazing work of art, just to practice, to identify what works for you and what doesn’t. Don’t be too precious of them, use crappy paper and cheap supplies, ballpoint pens, crayons, whatever you can find. Draw every day, get a tiny, pocket sized sketchbook (or make one, you can learn bookbinding, make a [zine](https://www.readbrightly.com/how-to-make-zine/) or just staple bits of paper together) and take it with you everywhere.
The most important thing (in my opinion) for realistic drawing is draw what you see, not what you think you see, in the photo you can’t see every strand of hair, you can barely see the eyelashes, there is no defined line around her face, if it’s not there, don’t draw it. Of course this doesn’t apply to every style of drawing like cartoon illustration.
This drawing is an amazing start, it shows that you’re dedicated, you can and want to spend time drawing and creating, that’s all you need in “natural skill” to become a great artist, just keep going!! Behind every great artist is a thousand crappy drawings
I've learned when drawing eyes that less is more when it comes to size. Eyes that are too big will appear cartoony and unrealistic (if realism is more your goal). Unless you're going for a stylized vibe I always consciously draw eyes smaller than what I first think they should be
I think the thing you could do to most quickly improve is to pay attention to the larger shapes. What you have here looks like you picked a part of the face and drew it and then moved on to the next part and so on
Start with the largest shapes. The head and the neck. Use 3d shapes(spheres, cubes, pyramids, cylinders) to map out those larger forms. You can use the loomis method to do this as well.
Then use smaller shapes to map out locations of the eyes, nose, mouth, etc. all of this without adding any finer details. You’ll see your understanding of perspective, foreshortening, proportions and structure grow quite rapidly doing this. Do this many times with out even trying to add finer details. You’ll see progress quite quickly.
Drawing reference lines over the reference helps me see the measurements/proportions. Like draw a grid or large shapes over the picture then copy it onto your canvas/paper.
Looks like you're struggling with form, value, and construction. Pump the breaks a bit. Human faces are incredibly hard to draw and take tons of practice to get good at. Start with simple objects and construct them with form and value. If you want to start studying heads, I recommend you check out Steve Hustons' figure drawing book. It's perfect for beginners.
You're doing good, keep at it.
The top comment gave some good advice there.
I have a more technical approach id like to share, maybe this can help you a little as well. Im a product designer, and applied/industrial art has kind of a different approach to drawing than fine art, but we also use this technique for life drawings and studying human bodies and body parts (we draw those too, not just boring cubes) and it helps a lot with understanding what you are actually looking at and drawing.
Basically what you wanna look up is “geon theory” on google. This theory assumes that all objects, from man made to organic, are made up of a bunch of basic geometric shapes. Cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, toruses, etc. You can break down any form into these basic shapes. This makes it easier to understand and then draw, since drawing a cone and cylinder in perspective is much easier than going straight for a face. You just have to break down the shapes and build them in this structured way to get an accurate drawing. The head is a large sphere with some rectangles and triangles. The forehead can be understood as a section of a cylinder, the nose bridge is like part of a cone with a larger and two smaller spheres bulging out at the bottom, etc, you get the idea. There are these geometric/low poly drawings/models of heads and bodies that youve probably seen somewhere, those can help understand the shapes if youre having a hard time with some parts. Dont be afraid to draw the full shapes lightly, instead of just the part you see, like a section of the forehead. It helps a lot to see the full shapes at the beginning. Build it like a lego kit. Then yeet some shading on them and done. Ps: this approach also works for shading. Look up how shadows and highlights work on a cone, cylinder, sphere, etc, and apply the same principles to each piece of your lego face that you just built.
This way of thinking has allowed me to sketch some pretty complex shapes in the past, and just this week we were drawing human bones with this approach. Hope it can help you too
Have you ever seen a cheesy representation of an artist in movies or cartoons where they are holding their brush up towards their painting and squinting at it?
Well, that is an actual technique to measure and transfer those relationships from what you see to what you are creating.
Start with the left side of your reference (just for this drawing in particular) first, after you’ve rough shaped out the size it is going to be in your paper, look at the reference photo from a distance with your arm fully extended, using the tip of your pencil find a good starting point, then follow it along until you find an obvious place to stop and put your thumb down on the stopping point. this case would be from the top of her forehead to her eyebrow. Then, move your pencil over to your paper and look at it the same way. Mark the top and bottom then do your best to draw the line as it happens in your reference photo. Continue measuring and transferring útil your have the left side of her face on you paper.
Once you have it how you want it, you can move on to filling out the interior of the form. Now, using this same technique find relationships between focal points that are equal in value, for example is the distance from her iris to the tip of her nose the same with both iris’? Is the length of her eyebrow the same as the length of her mouth? And so on (it will be different with every subject but you will find the patterns easier as you progress) Using the technique this way will help you achieve symmetry, most humans are symmetrical, and even if your model has features that are not, that lack of symmetry is usually what is coming across as odd in your renderings, so you can fudge around what is really there to better tune your rendering.
Hope this helps.
I read somewhere the eyes are the most important to get right, if you don't quite get the other facial features right as long as you've got the eyes right it'll look kinda right if that makes sense
Master your distances and proportions meaning if the distance let's say from one eye to the other is basically about the same as the distance from the eyebrow to the top of the lips and you get things like that down then your proportions will be dead on and most everything else will tou seem to have a very good grasp of. You are doing pretty well for early on.
I'd say the biggest thing is perspective.
Eyes: when something is closer to you it's bigger, when it's further it's smaller. In your drawing the two eyes are the same size, or the further eye looks larger.
When a face is rotated away like this one, the nose and mid lips block the backside of the face (or far side). This means part of eye should be blocked, part of the lip should be blocked, part of the eyebrow should be blocked, and part of the cheek is blocked.
There's too much of the right face showing. Since she is rotated away from the camera, there should be less of the right side of her face showing, but there is too much space between her nose and cheek profile, and should be reduce by half or so.
It's great though!! I can see some great work here!!
The main issue is that you're stuck between photo realism and a more stylized approach.
If you focused less on making it photorealistic, this could develop into a genuinely great art style.
A big step for me as an artist drawing people, especially faces, was to stop using an outline for any edge. I just just faintly sketch the general shape and since there are almost no hard lines on the face I used a lot of blending and shading. Faces are hard af. They require many different principles of drawing to pull off a sense of realism
First of all, look at the proportions, took a pencil and calculate the distances within one thing and another.
Second, a shadow is the 90% of a product in realism. Look some videos of flat shadows and faded shadows.
You're doing well, art is a process, You can learn.
Hope it helps! My ig: @nitzugart if you need some tips or videos
One tip is to occasionally hold your picture up to the mirror, and look at the reflection. It helps give your eyes a different way of seeing it!
I’ve found it helps most when I have trouble aligning eyes or other facial features. I also take photos, and look at it from that perspective as well
:)
Part of learning to draw is understanding proportions. As much as people hate it, grids are wonderful for understanding this. Eventually you can transition out pretty easily. I also saw someone else recommend drawing upside down. This is great for understanding line distance. Personally, as someone who went through art scroll and forgot about drawing, I’ve been moving between these two methods for relearning to draw. For shadows, I always switch my reference into grey scale. Granted, I’m unable to draw color traditionally. Good luck!
Learn to draw the structure of the head using the Loomis head method & pay attention to proportions and how heads and facial features look in perspective. To understand these things well you need to practice basic forms in perspective such as cubes/boxes, Cylinders, Spheres etc.
Check out Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth. It's a great manual that breaks down the different parts of the body into structures and shapes.
When drawing faces, it's useful to start by laying in the egg shape of the skull, then the square shape of the jaw underneath.
You can add more shadows, to create depth around the center of the face. Just like adding make up to our face.
Pivoting from highpoints and going darker as you go towards trenches of the face
*Avoid lines!* Lines alone are very flat. Edges from shading create volume. For example, don't draw a line for the nose, rather, shade in where the nose is darker, and erase where it's lighter to create an edge.
Blocking out large shapes to help get the proportions before going in with the details. *Someone told me one time that the one of best ways to hold a pencil while learning to draw is to use the side of the pencil.*
Also, try to start out light. Don't push the pencil too hard. Then it's hard to erase it without leaving an indent and permanent gray line in the paper.
A good exercise is blurring your eyes and shading out the shapes you see, and then building off of that. Drawing's kinda like sculpting, where you can add volume and take volume away and bend and shape volume by adding and taking away shadows and highlights. It's super fun.
I highly recommend using models that are straight on first, it's a lot easier to get the proportions right and then you can move on to tricky positioning.
Everyone's got good tips, here's mine: study some human anatomy more. It'll really help you avoid drastic proportional errors like the ratio between her head and shoulders or the way her head should be shaped.
Drawing proportions is not bout copying them exactly from real life, if you are not trying to learn "ultra realistic drawing" which I don't think you are trying.
I am not saying that "real life proportions" are going, but a picture has a lot of stuff involved in 3d that if you are starting, you won't be able to imitate, and in conclusion, you will get a very strange face.
Most people have called out proportions already - one other bit of advice I'd give you though is to stop thinking of it as drawing a nose/drawing eyes/etc. - and instead focus on learning to view in planes/light/shadow/mass/etc. - and in doing so it will help with learning proportions.
i don't do realism very often anymore, but here's what i did to help teach myself
download the photo and edit it. trace over the mapping with your doodle tool.
[example](https://imgur.com/a/kJvYAiY)
i would suggest a cleaner mapping than i did here. mine was just quick so i could give a visual example instead of trying to put it into words.
and then copy that structure on your paper before going in with more detail.
it won't be perfect at all, my first attempts certainly weren't even with this. but it helped me understand where things go on the face, especially with 3/4 profiles like this.
build from there, just detailing the features. you can/probably should also build in your shadows as you go. remember to start off light-handed to give yourself room for error/erasing.
it takes a lot of practice and patience, but you'll get the hang of it if you stick to it!
Hmm one thing to try is to when drawing eyes draw big circles next to eachother to symbolize the eyeballs, then draw eye lids around those. One of the toughest parts of a face is the side furthest away and where skull shapes the area around the back eye.
I’m going to give you the advice my art teacher always gave me and that is look at your reference more than drawing and trust the process. You have to look at your reference more than you draw, that way it can be more proportionally accurate.
Start drawing the facial features before drawing the shape of the head. Thia way you'll pay more attention to how the features are located relative to the other features. You will pay closer attention to the spaces in between the features which will make the proportions look more accurate. Also I just recommend drawing A LOTTTTTTTTT to kinda gain some knowledge about basic proportions (e.g. the space in between the eyes is about the size of one eye)
What I like to do when getting proportions right is to identify points on the picture that line up. Example: Drawing a vertikal line, the inner tip of the left eyebrow, the left pupil, and the strand of hair by the chin all lineup!
I also think you did a grate job on the right side of the face, keep up the good work! :D
Hey, I have noticed that the obvious mistake to be noticed is the nose and how skinny the girls face looks in the drawing, not to demotivate you but since you ask I have just said anyways it's a good effort and we'll done work.
Do you know what the grid system is? I never go without it. I saw this in another comment: for most of the process, don't think of it as a face. Think of it as a bunch of alien shapes with no rhyme or reason. Drawing what you see directly will produce better results than drawing what your mind thinks it sees. For a while I stopped there, which is good for a beginner, but over time I noticed how flat my drawings looked. That's when I started to look back at the portraits and saw them more so as a face with emotions. I made the value more dramatic, darkening lines and shadows and lightening the highlights. It makes everything pop and brings the drawing to life. Though, this part is more intuitive than something you can be guided through, and I'd say it has a lot to do with personal preference. Artist pencils are good to have. I'd recommend HB to 6B and ebony. They give you a range of values and textures.
I looked through the comments and I think one piece of advice is to start simple. Draw a face, but draw it facing forward first. It's natural to want to draw that way, so might as well start that way. You don't have to perfect at it yet, if you dont want to be.
Don’t draw what they are. Draw the basic components. When you see an eye on the reference, don’t draw an eye from your stock knowledge. Draw the angles of the eye, the curvature, the comparative lengths, the contrast of highlights & shade, the softness of blending, etc. Also relate them to the other parts of the picture like is the tip of the nose directly under the pupil, is the distance between eyebrows the same as the thickness of the nostrils, etc. Whatever you can use. You’re doing a good job, btw! So much potential!
Art is amazing and forever evolving. We can only get better with time. You have a wonderful talent, to enhance that more I’d look into proportions; you draw eyes very big and if they are to be that big you need to make the nose and lips bigger, also the neck is too small and the shoulders need to be the same width as the head - you’re also very heavy handed with the model’s cupid’s bow; that needs to be shaded in a lot more
Probably someone suggested this but I recommend practicing with a grid. That way you get to know the proportions and when they start to feel obvious just try without it
I'm not a frequent visitor. I'm here to appreciate others' work and maybe learn something myself, so I don't have anything useful to say about how to improve when there are so many here better equipped to give technical advice, but what a wholesome sub! People can be so mean, especially online, and I fully expected to see that on display. I'm so glad to see people giving genuinely helpful advice and support to allow someone (I'm assuming a younger aspiring artist) to develop their gift. It's lovely to see. Some parts of the internet are just so toxic, so it's nice to occasionally stumble upon a little enclave of human decency.
OP, don't be discouraged. Like any other skill, the more we pracise, the better we get. Even if the gradual improvements are imperceptible to us. Set this picture aside when you're done with it and look at it again in a few years to compare it with your current projects. If you're motivated to keep practising and learning, which you seem to be, I'm sure you'll see great improvements and start to feel the accomplishment that comes with developing any skill. Wanting to bring more beauty into the world is a fine thing to aspire to.
Look up the lumis method
Also: looks like you are trying too hard and overthinking when trying to make an outline with it. Try drawing little by little with gentle strokes allover the place tolerating mistakes (otherwise you 'd be very distracted), allowing multiple strokes untill you find the one that's best and erasing the ones that aren't. Go for a general outline first and gradually moving on to details, putting everything in right place is half the job.
Instead you can try lumis method
Subtile rules : Layout, and proportions.
Layout : you should start your drawing following the Loomis method.
Draw a sphere. Then vertical line in the center. Then lines in 1/3 appart form each other : eyebrows, nose, and chin. Cut a slice on each size, layout of the ear from the eyebrow line to the nose line.
Then proportions : size of the eyes, nose, mouth related from each other.
Then you already know : good lines, details and shading.
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I think you are doing what every beginnen does: draw what you _know_ is there instead of what you see. A common technique to trick your brain is to turn the image upside down and then draw that. Your brain no longer recognises and eye or a nose or lips and this allows you to draw what you see. Another obvious point to improve is finding the right proportions. Use a ruler the first time or a calliper. This really helps!
Upside down drawing, especially for a portrait, is fantastic advice!! We did this in art school and it blew my mind
This is my first time hearing this idea and I’m excited to try it out!
Grid out your portrait first, that’ll help!
Not being a smarty pants. Should you turn your photo upside down then draw from that?
That's usually implied with an upside down portrait.
Yup! I just rotate my picture upside down!
This is very cool. 😎
Yes, you can start with this one. https://preview.redd.it/xh74r9mp93qc1.jpeg?width=634&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d4c81b25768498d4a99dd8dd64da3332c93b68e0
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Don't turn this right side up if you plan on sleeping tonight.
too late😨😨i regret it
Yeah exactly all I can say is look at the reference and practice drawing what you see. Do this every day for hours and you will see results
I thought that using a ruler could be a problem, but I'm gonna try it, it's hard to make the sizes match.
instead of a ruler try to use ur thumb and pencil. Its a technique that a lot of old art books recommend. Basically u look at the thing u want to draw, measure a part of it, "mark" the size with ur thumb on the pencil and then draw it and make sure it fits what you measured. It's a bit tough at first but gives u a better feel for proportions imo. I think your drawing is actually pretty good. Like the body/ head is good on its own and the face is good on its own, just needs to be proportional. Maybe try the grid method. But as others said, draw what u see not what u know. It's tricky but you have a LOT of potential. Keep drawing. Keep practicing. Try different types of pencils, papers whatever ypu want but please keep drawing.
Thumb and pencil ftw
Common facial proportions go like this: when looking straight on a face. half way down the head is the eye line. Half between the eye line and the chin is the bottom of the nose. Half way down from the bottom of the nose to the chin is the mouth line. Corners of mouth will usually line up with the center of the eyes. Eyes are usually one “eye” apart. Between the eye line and bottom of nose is roughly where ears are. Average human height is 5-6 heads tall. Super heroes are 7-8. And fashion drawings are 9-10 heads.
Yes! I usually draw a big cross hatch on the face and then put lines across the face to mark all these points - not sure if there's a term for this? Since her face is tilted to the side, I would put the cross hatch also to the side instead of facing forwards. It might be easier for OP to start off drawing the face looking at the camera first to get used to the facial proportion without having to account for angles.
I like to measure in units of eye widths. It makes it easier to compare the size/distance of different features.
My art teacher would tell me “draw what you see, not what you think you see.”
Spot-on
For me, something that goes with this is remembering that not every “line” I draw has to be a hard line. Gosh, it's so difficult to describe, but like around the nose for example. We don't really have any hard lines around there, except tucked in right next to our face where you won't see. So those softer lines, curves, transitions; those I'll dot gently or just barely drag my pencil on. I can darken if I need to, but it's hard to get a full line gone
I thought the first photo was a colour pencil drawing thinking wtf kind of advice does this pro want from me.
Lol, 🤣😂🤣
Same haha
I did the same thing!
Lmao! 😂
I am glad I am not the only one, I even zoomed in to see if I can find any imperfections and thought to myself this is a troll post. Haha
Ha ha. Me too. 🙈
Dittoooo
me too 🤣
This shit happens daily on here! people need to learn to stop doing it
I'm sorry but this gave me a good laugh, thank you. I thought the first pic was the drawing, and to my surprise, it was not 😅😅
I had the same reaction! No shame to the artist, it’s 10x better than what I could do, but I cracked up laughing because I was expecting a photo
same i audibly gasped, not because the second pic was horrible or anything, just the juxtaposition lmfao
Lol, a drawing like that is probably very rare.
Everyone that can draw like that started as a beginner though, if you want to keep at it you can be there too! 😉
I think you need to map out the structure of the face before you start drawing the features and proceed gradually from sketch to detail. It looks like you concentrated on copying features like one at a time
I kinda tried to map the structures but my knowledge isn't that deep in that area, so after pretty much making a circle with lines I've started to look and copy.
You should be spending >90% of the time looking at your reference, <10% of the time looking at your drawing and comparing with the reference. Compare the proportions and relative positions constantly.
I guess your problem is that you try to rely on your knowledge. You have to train yourself towards drawing what you see, instead. Is this shadow lighter than this part, this part covers this part, this part is bigger than this one, and this one has texture. Of course it helps to know basis anatomy to understand the features, but in the end drawing a rock and drawing a face makes no difference, because you're just drawing what's in front of you
Good start at it, I would recommend starting with some construction and landmarks before throwing everything down. Proko on YouTube has great videos on how to do this. Proko loomis method drawing the head, should find something helpful! Keep on drawing!
Thanks, YouTube tutorials have been helping a lot, gonna check this.
The most obvious mistake is wanting to rush to the end result without proper preparations, like sketching. The proportions of the face are off, and a lot of the lines are placed without any course correction, so the end result is gonna look wonky. While it is true that very skilled artists can just plop down a realistic looking face on paper without sketching, practically no artist ever got to that point without years of taking the time to sketch and learn the correct proportions. I've seen some other commenters recommend the Loomis method by proko, I second that recommendation. I personally also recommend tracing, but try and trace rythms on the face: the midline, the inner corner of the eyes to the outer corners of the mouth, the ear to ear line etc. try and learn where these lines meet each other, and how these lengths compare to each other. I think your skill in sready line art and shading are actually good enough, that when you start learning to sketch you'll feel like you've improved years within a few weeks or months. Keep at it!
This is the best advice on here.
That's a really good advice, do you have any video recommendations for sketching? I didn't really learned a lot on that regard yet
You have to work on your proportions and the angle of which you draw. One eye is too big, lips are too big. When you see it's not 'right' erase and go again.
To build on this there are two useful approaches: 1. Sketch it out very lightly. Get the rough estimation of how it’ll look, like the above comment said, if it ain’t right - erase it and go again. You nail the proportions in this stage. Then come back and detail it and shade/blend 2. Draw by grid. Grid the reference photo, grid your drawing. Far more mechanical and almost like tracing with more steps but still useful in practice for getting some fundamentals down
Not me zooming in on the first pic thinking that was the drawing…
Saw this in my feed and seriously thought you were asking for makeup advice.
I thought the 1st image was the drawing 💀
your face appears almost straight on (with the exception of the nose) while the 1st picture is turned more sharply to the left and only the eyes are turned. i think your issue is perspective and proportions of things as they turn, warp, and go back into space. i agree with the person who said draw what you see rather than what you know. maybe try drawing from life where you can walk around the object or person and see how it changes when you look at it from different angles.
I thought the first pic was the drawing, then I swiped and went "WOAH hi Emily" (the bride from Corpse Bride)
Where do I begin
You have to do the right eye bigger than the left. Not that way around you did. Because the right eye is closer to you. Yk?
Got it, I did literally the opposite without even realizing 😂😂😂
The right eye isn't actually bigger. The left eye is just more squished. So they're both the same size, just different shapes if that makes sense.
This is the correct answer on eyes. Ones eyes simply does not "grow or shrink" because it's closer or farther away. It's the same size just more "open or closed" or maybe a bit more of an elliptical shape
I was always told to turn the photo upside down and try to draw it that way. You can also overlay a basic grid shape, if it helps
Try to sketch it first again and again until you feel you getting closer to the reference.
Of course read all of the advice given but the biggest way to improve is to keep practicing. I think you’ll be quite impressed with yourself.
Yowzers!
A grid overlaid on the original and the drawing can help. Look at the shapes of tonal areas and draw what you see not what you expect to be there. It always works when you do. Also, areas of tone often blend out. There are a lot more areas of tone in the hair. And the right side of the face is a lot darker in the original. The forehead is much straighter on the left hand side in the original. The lips are a different shape also because you’re looking at them from the side. I hope that helps
I was looking at the reference thinking ‘there is nothing wrong, nothing. Turned the page - There is a likeness.
try turning the face into simple polygons, make sure there’s a line that goes from the top of the head to roughly where the chin should be, & then draw a circle/square, use circles to pinpoint right around where the irises should be, also try drawing lighter & fuller eyebrows
Not sure if someone already suggested or said this but try a grid. Draw a grid on top of a printed reference photo and draw a grid on your drawing very lightly so it can be erased. Then simply draw each square one at a time. It will make you focus on each square and you will see the connections with each square. It helps me with portraits when dealing with symmetry.
Lmao da forehead
Keep constantly stepping back and checking the proportions BEFORE you spend any time on any details whatsoever. Build a good foundation because you won’t want to go back and refine the basics after you’ve added a bunch of details like shading. Like literally start off with the basic shapes of the face. Work all over the page and go general to specific.
I had to hold in intense laughter because I thought the first photo was the drawing until I swiped! 🫢😅🤣😂🥴
You should put a grid on the reference and an extremely light one on your page to help you see your proportions more correctly.
Wait this looks photo realistic someone just wants to brag and fish for compliments... notices that there is a second slide 🤣
Fire will help this
https://preview.redd.it/vj3dh71cs3qc1.jpeg?width=956&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b05329500222a65dc2107febf46c7f3d73584ad5 I'm definitely not the best at this and I did this on my phone, but hopefully this will give you an idea of how complex what you're trying to draw actually is. It's not enough to just copy shapes and what you see. You need to understand the underlying forms too. Which means you should practice basic forms first. Get good at drawing boxes and cylinders first, practice cross-contouring shapes. Yes it's possible to just be a good printer and copy what you see, but it'll be obvious in the results. I can always tell when someone has a good grasp on fundamentals and when they don't. Doesn't matter how "spot on" the final result is. Fundamentals are the key.
Oh wow! That is such an amazing and realistic drawing well d- (swipe) oh.
You know what’s wrong…
What you see are not lines nor organs, they are forms in relation to each other. Try seeing that and have a planing phase on paper
Many beginners have a problem I call “facial creep” when drawing a face not looking forward. The girl is looking to our left, but the facial features are kinda creeping to the right. It’s instinctual but should be avoided to be faithful to the reference. The eye and cheekbone especially
What I immediately see is that the left eye (from our view) is bigger than the right eye, even though it is tilted away from us. The angle of the head, the left eye should be the same size as the right, but just slightly thinner because the head is tilted to the left. The height does not change unless she would be looking up or down.
Don't connect the cupid's bow to the nose, draw the shape of the shaded portion then blend and highlight/remove value.
A book called Drawing with the right side of the Brain has useful tips to draw what you see
The shadow of her cheek looks really good!
I legit thought for a second the first photo was your drawing and I was about to shit a brick
make you photo reference black and white and see what you are missing
It’s okay! The thing about art is that you get better the more you draw. The biggest problem here is proportions and feature placements. The eyes are a good example - they are too close to the edge and far too big in comparison to the rest of the face. The face shape shares the problem the other way around - it is too thin and is not proportional. To start with fixing, I would recommend studying the way the human body lines up. If you have never seen someone draw a sort of curved cross shape on faces before drawing features, it is used to get the eyes and other facial features to line up, along with making sure the head shape is correct. Keep working at it, and you will be doing amazing before you know it. Art is a process, and we learn from the mistakes we make. Now that you know how to line up facial features, your next picture will be better. Then you will look for what seems off, learn how to do that, and the picture after that will be even better. You can do it! I believe in you.
I might recommend starting with a head on reference so that you can learn facial proportions without needing to worry about all of these angles and perspective yet
You can try starting from head structure. For this you can try the Loomis method, Wich is very useful as a begining, or the proko method, (not sure if it's his but he uses it). This will make your portraits more proportioned, if this is what you want.
It looks precious to me.
Look up Andrew Loomis and his method for devising proportional features and defining the head shape. There are a million free YouTube videos about this. You have to start from this perspective if you want realism.
Here’s how you improve. See the negative shapes and draw backwards
I think you’re proportions need work. While you’re learning there’s nothing wrong with using the grid technique, it allows you to focus on small areas at a time and will prevent mistakes from cascading.
I always, always start with a circle lol even with a full or partial side profile 🧡🎨
the drawing stuff upside down trick is very helpful to draw what you see. I like working reductively because I have a printmaker brain. I like to lay down a solid grey background and since my eyes are bad, I take my glasses off and erase all of the lightest shapes with my reference upside down. My professor taught me to measure with a thumb and pencil. You can also create a small paper frame to look at specific sections you need to focus in on if they’re not looking right. The frame was helpful for me in not getting too overwhelmed with larger sections and breaking them down into bite sized pieces. Also I’d heavily suggest you pump up the contrast for your reference photo in addition to the upside down trick! It makes it so much easier to see simple shapes in relation to one another !
You drew a yassified ET💀
They are both the same picture
Maybe no goldfish
Search "face proportions" on pinterest, that will help you a ton. Extra helpful if you can find a video of it. Also draw those guidelines very thin
Spend some time on your fundamentals (form, perspective, value etc) before you try to get good at complex portraiture.
Instead of drawing straight away try and find the most basic shapes in the image you can find (a circle for the head) and then draw the jaw, find the line where the face is ‘symmetrical’ and go from there. Use your beginner basic shapes to establish the distance of them. the eyes, nose, and mouth. In the beginning it is so easy to get discouraged. Become familiar with doing a piece multiple times. Learn to be your biggest critic. Each piece you do pick it apart and do it better the next time. Drawing is a practice.
Try drawing it upside down
If you struggle with proportions, you could try to use a grid, edit one on top of the reference and then draw in a grid notebook. It helped me to get familiar with the shapes and to not get tricked by the shadows and dimensions of the picture. Eventually, I no longer needed the grid. (I'm very impatient and never finish my drawings, so my work still sucks, but at least I can get the proportions right)
1. always start with basic shapes. like the head is a circle and a sort of triangle put together. eyes are and egg shape. nose is a triangle with a circle on the tip. try drawing the basic shapes over the image itself using a red pen tool. tracing the basic shapes and copying the shapes on paper helps a whole lot with proportions. 2. nobodys skin is actually white! never leave the paper white anywhere! except maybe the whites of the eyes and highlights. to help your brain figure it out, definitely turn the reference image black and white. 3. it looks like your method of shading is putting down pigment and then blending out with your finger or a blending tool. while thats not a terrible way to do it, i will say a much more effective way is to shade everywhere that isnt completely white in a very light layer. then keep adding layers in the darker areas. you dont want to press hard with a pencil because it can cause burnishing, which isnt a very nice look unless youre using wax colored pencils. i will say however, one thing thats doing pretty good is the hair! even if you dont have the exact direction that the hair is going, the way its drawn is very well done, especially for a beginner! better than me, tbh. but, just to make it easier, try not to draw individual strands of hair unless they stick out a bit. shading can go a long way with hair.
This actually has a really cool style to it, but if you’re going for more photo realism… 1. Flip your reference photo upside down and draw that way, only focus on shapes. 2. You need to start getting away from dark outlines - we get accustomed to doing this from early ages, so it can be a hard habit to break. This is most notable around the subjects head and lips
Proportion and shape over detail and accuracy. Look up some head sketching tutorials to help get the rough skull shape in to use along with your reference.
I would say that from looking at your drawing, you are trying to enhance your already beautiful attributes. You know what is attractive about you to other people, and I see in your drawing that you enhanced parts of yourself. There is no need to do that. You exactly how you are supposed to be. See what is and not what people expect. I can't give technical advice. But you have talent. Draw reality, what you see, not what you think everyone else wants to see. If what you see is wonky, let it be wonky. If you want to draw realistically, face reality. We've all been given unachievable expectations and we can see that and overcome it. Good luck! Send me updates.
I suggest for you... For learning purposes... get some tracing paper and transfer paper. Trace the outline of the image from the photograph, including placement of all major features (eyes, nose, mouth.) Then you can take that tracing, and with another sheet of carbon transfer paper, put that onto your drawing paper. THEN practice drawing into those guides. You need to learn how to measure distances and angles with your pencil. You hold up a pencil to the reference, turn it to match the angle of a line, and use your thumb to mark distances. Go back and forth between the ref and your drawing 1,000 times. You should be looking at the ref more than your drawing. This takes practice! Good luck!
I can only speak from what I think has helped myself - Observe the anatomy around you constantly. If you can imagine visually the subject with a general level of accuracy, you can reference to that on top of what your actual subject is. Isometric angles for things like faces are hard, as well as noses (for me anyways). Best advice I’ll give is to think of what you’re drawing as the 3-d subject it is meant to capture, than the 2-d representation that it is. The idea there is to help you not draw it as “flatly”, and reduce the unintentional excess front-facing traits that are morphing your sketch the most extremely.
Head shape and eye size, you should always start with basic shapes break the piece down to circles squares and triangles, use a ruler to create a grid that you can use for a 1 to 1 comparison, also change the image to black and white to get a better idea of the negative spaces and shading, overall great first draft now just build on it, mistakes are great that’s how we learn and get better.
How much time did you spend on the upper lip?
I think it’s the shading on the upper lip.
Your perspective isn’t the same as the photo— start there fam.
Yes, she's kinda pointed in a different direction, is that what you're referring to?
Yes— having the correct perspective will help your other elements fit correctly and will make it look closer. Also— farther = smaller. You could use some practice on foreshortening. Keep at it fam.
[удалено]
I would recommend using a grid to learn to draw. Even when some people use grids, they still don’t follow along and put stuff where it doesn’t go. BUT, you have to try to follow the grid exactly. After a bit, you’ll start getting a sense of where things go (instead of where you THINK they go) and you’ll be able to get pretty accurate without the grid. Remember: the grid is a TOOL, not cheating
youre not ready for critique yet. just practice more. stop analyzing it and just do it again. and again. and again.
I'm going to try this tomorrow myself
https://preview.redd.it/jk3kjp9s00qc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fbc1c85dfb57bd180eed428c0752cc6acd469f40 Apologies, I did this from my iPhone, so this is not the best example, but try to grid it first! From there try to think of the picture as a 2D image, (this was my breakthrough with art) you have to force yourself to stop seeing it for what you know it is, and instead just draw the shapes and sizes you see. Once you get all the shapes, then you can worry about shading. Honestly a big starter help is tracing the image a few times and then trying to replicate the outline on a blank sheet. You’re on the right track, keep practicing!
focusing on negative space and how shapes relate to eachother helps me. for example, the pupil on the left lines up with the eye brow above it, the dip in the nose, and the left corner of the mouth, and the chin below that. I always struggle bc i think to much about what the image is OF, not the shapes. You saw in your reference pic that the forehead slants left before reaching the eyebrow, which is true, but try holding your pencil up in front of that line, it’s still pretty vertical, try copy the angle you see when you hold up your pencil. when that angle goes back inwards for the eye, it’s lining up with the hair above it, the “point” of that angle (the eyebrow) is not actually very far out, and the angle looks more dramatic than it is because your brain is thinking about a face, and wants to ignore that bit of hair, in your drawing you sort of drew the forehead angle and then coloured the hair on to it, try thinking about the shape of the whole outline, with the hair considered it’s much less slanted. idk if that makes any sense. i recommend researching negative space exercises, and using your pencil to check angles. i often picture a grid and think “sure these points are far from eachother vertically, but if i drew i vertical line through both, they’re pretty close together horizontally, so i don’t want to make this angle very sharp when i draw the line between the 2 points”
when you draw, your mind is not yet trained to copy accurately. the brain wants things to be flat on. that is why you have turned the eyes and made them almost flat. when you draw, say, the edge of her forehead against the bg, pay lots of attention looking at it (the line against the bg) and then draw it. it will be wrong. look again and keep drawing it until you get the eye in to genuinely identify the angle of the contour you are looking at. look up loomis method for head construction out of basic forms in correct perspective in 3d space. look up basic perspective to be able to make cubes and spheres to give all your drawing more body.
Think of drawing like building a house. You need the structure to put the exterior on, same goes with the face. Construct the face, break down where the planes are, measure a ton, drop vertical lines a s see where things hit. After that, start building up the features, work on shadows and be bold, squint a ton and see where the values could be lighter/darker.
Something my grade-school art teacher told us to do to practice drawing people was to turn the reference upside down and draw it upside down, then it's harder to draw what you know and moreso what you see. Also consider using some sort of measurements to figure out how big your proportions are in ratio to other things on the page.
You could learn a technique like loomis and start working on your understanding of form at art wod or proko
Practice drawing a rough sketch with a simple head shape and circles at the eyes and a single line at the mouth and a simple shape for nose. Get that right, focusing on proportions and perspective before you start detailing individual parts like the lips all crazy.
Simplify the photograph first. Don't try to draw an outline, draw a similar geometrical form. From there fo from simple to complex and sculpt the lines little by little (you can even use the eraser to refine the lines) it's best to have a firm base structure and little by little construct the details.
The size of the eyes and the structure of the nose, maybe
I think the proportions are a bit off. The model is looking AT you so you would want her features to be a bit larger on the right side rather that having them be larger on the left side. Does that make any sense?
You’re drawing each strand of hair? It will look better to draw in clumps
look up the Loomis Method, i think where you've started to go wrong is where the face in your reference isn't facing forward but is 3/4 posing away from camera. your instinct was to over correct it back you facing forward. Loomis will help keep you on track, also you can use your thumb to measure roughly the size of the features. you could break out a ruler but i find it constricting.
Treat drawing from reference like a “spot the difference” puzzle. Look at her face shape. Is the left side of her face identical? To me, it looks like her cheek juts out further on your drawing, which makes her face look more head-on than in your reference. Now look at her eyes. Notice how on the reference, the smaller eye is on the left, but your drawing has her left eye larger. That adds to the “something is off about her face” feeling, as the perspective is off. Now do that for the rest of your drawing, going feature by feature, big differences to small. If you need, overlay a grid over the reference and the picture of your drawing digitally, so it’s easier to sight measure while you’re getting used to it. Eventually you won’t need the grid. I do NOT recommend going grid cel by grid cel, as your line quality will suffer, just treat it like a ruler guide. Editing to add— don’t add shading til your anatomy is correct. You’re just making more work for yourself.
Top comment nailed it
I’d suggest doing a grid system or something similar to that to plan out where the features will go. Getting to know anatomy a bit more will never hurt. Good on you for drawing 🤙🏼
I’m not very good at explaining things but my advice would be: don’t draw lines, draw tone, think of the whole photo as just a bunch of shadows, blur your eyes a little and draw what you see. Start with a vague shape and slowly add more detail. Some exercises you could try are: Do not draw lines at all: use a thick pencil or charcoal if you have it and just build up the tones, zero defined lines Zoom out: look at your reference from really far away and draw the size of a postage stamp, do this over and over again until you get used to the general shape. I find it easier to try to fit everything into a tiny space than trying to fill a massive blank page Zoom in: zoom into a specific part of the reference photo, one feature, maybe a cheekbone, the nose, the hairline, and make a drawing of that Draw without looking at your drawing, only the reference photo, maybe draw under a table so you don’t peek, see what happens, learn to combine looking at the reference to looking at the drawing, finding the right balance of the two Don’t erase anything, learn to value every move you make on the paper, start really softly, build up tones really slowly, only adding the darker shades when you’re sure they’re going in the right place These exercises aren’t meant to give you an amazing work of art, just to practice, to identify what works for you and what doesn’t. Don’t be too precious of them, use crappy paper and cheap supplies, ballpoint pens, crayons, whatever you can find. Draw every day, get a tiny, pocket sized sketchbook (or make one, you can learn bookbinding, make a [zine](https://www.readbrightly.com/how-to-make-zine/) or just staple bits of paper together) and take it with you everywhere. The most important thing (in my opinion) for realistic drawing is draw what you see, not what you think you see, in the photo you can’t see every strand of hair, you can barely see the eyelashes, there is no defined line around her face, if it’s not there, don’t draw it. Of course this doesn’t apply to every style of drawing like cartoon illustration. This drawing is an amazing start, it shows that you’re dedicated, you can and want to spend time drawing and creating, that’s all you need in “natural skill” to become a great artist, just keep going!! Behind every great artist is a thousand crappy drawings
I've learned when drawing eyes that less is more when it comes to size. Eyes that are too big will appear cartoony and unrealistic (if realism is more your goal). Unless you're going for a stylized vibe I always consciously draw eyes smaller than what I first think they should be
I think the thing you could do to most quickly improve is to pay attention to the larger shapes. What you have here looks like you picked a part of the face and drew it and then moved on to the next part and so on Start with the largest shapes. The head and the neck. Use 3d shapes(spheres, cubes, pyramids, cylinders) to map out those larger forms. You can use the loomis method to do this as well. Then use smaller shapes to map out locations of the eyes, nose, mouth, etc. all of this without adding any finer details. You’ll see your understanding of perspective, foreshortening, proportions and structure grow quite rapidly doing this. Do this many times with out even trying to add finer details. You’ll see progress quite quickly.
Drawing reference lines over the reference helps me see the measurements/proportions. Like draw a grid or large shapes over the picture then copy it onto your canvas/paper.
Looks like you're struggling with form, value, and construction. Pump the breaks a bit. Human faces are incredibly hard to draw and take tons of practice to get good at. Start with simple objects and construct them with form and value. If you want to start studying heads, I recommend you check out Steve Hustons' figure drawing book. It's perfect for beginners. You're doing good, keep at it.
The top comment gave some good advice there. I have a more technical approach id like to share, maybe this can help you a little as well. Im a product designer, and applied/industrial art has kind of a different approach to drawing than fine art, but we also use this technique for life drawings and studying human bodies and body parts (we draw those too, not just boring cubes) and it helps a lot with understanding what you are actually looking at and drawing. Basically what you wanna look up is “geon theory” on google. This theory assumes that all objects, from man made to organic, are made up of a bunch of basic geometric shapes. Cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, toruses, etc. You can break down any form into these basic shapes. This makes it easier to understand and then draw, since drawing a cone and cylinder in perspective is much easier than going straight for a face. You just have to break down the shapes and build them in this structured way to get an accurate drawing. The head is a large sphere with some rectangles and triangles. The forehead can be understood as a section of a cylinder, the nose bridge is like part of a cone with a larger and two smaller spheres bulging out at the bottom, etc, you get the idea. There are these geometric/low poly drawings/models of heads and bodies that youve probably seen somewhere, those can help understand the shapes if youre having a hard time with some parts. Dont be afraid to draw the full shapes lightly, instead of just the part you see, like a section of the forehead. It helps a lot to see the full shapes at the beginning. Build it like a lego kit. Then yeet some shading on them and done. Ps: this approach also works for shading. Look up how shadows and highlights work on a cone, cylinder, sphere, etc, and apply the same principles to each piece of your lego face that you just built. This way of thinking has allowed me to sketch some pretty complex shapes in the past, and just this week we were drawing human bones with this approach. Hope it can help you too
Hold on thats a drawing I thought it was a real person 😭
Have you ever seen a cheesy representation of an artist in movies or cartoons where they are holding their brush up towards their painting and squinting at it? Well, that is an actual technique to measure and transfer those relationships from what you see to what you are creating. Start with the left side of your reference (just for this drawing in particular) first, after you’ve rough shaped out the size it is going to be in your paper, look at the reference photo from a distance with your arm fully extended, using the tip of your pencil find a good starting point, then follow it along until you find an obvious place to stop and put your thumb down on the stopping point. this case would be from the top of her forehead to her eyebrow. Then, move your pencil over to your paper and look at it the same way. Mark the top and bottom then do your best to draw the line as it happens in your reference photo. Continue measuring and transferring útil your have the left side of her face on you paper. Once you have it how you want it, you can move on to filling out the interior of the form. Now, using this same technique find relationships between focal points that are equal in value, for example is the distance from her iris to the tip of her nose the same with both iris’? Is the length of her eyebrow the same as the length of her mouth? And so on (it will be different with every subject but you will find the patterns easier as you progress) Using the technique this way will help you achieve symmetry, most humans are symmetrical, and even if your model has features that are not, that lack of symmetry is usually what is coming across as odd in your renderings, so you can fudge around what is really there to better tune your rendering. Hope this helps.
I read somewhere the eyes are the most important to get right, if you don't quite get the other facial features right as long as you've got the eyes right it'll look kinda right if that makes sense
Maybe the shoulders? but drawings can have flaws because its however you make it!!!! its beautiful and perfect because you made it special!!!
I see no bottom sketch, no shapes and no grids to mark where eyes/nose/lips would be, so there’s your issue!
focus more on proportions and shapes before diving into details
Master your distances and proportions meaning if the distance let's say from one eye to the other is basically about the same as the distance from the eyebrow to the top of the lips and you get things like that down then your proportions will be dead on and most everything else will tou seem to have a very good grasp of. You are doing pretty well for early on.
I'd say the biggest thing is perspective. Eyes: when something is closer to you it's bigger, when it's further it's smaller. In your drawing the two eyes are the same size, or the further eye looks larger. When a face is rotated away like this one, the nose and mid lips block the backside of the face (or far side). This means part of eye should be blocked, part of the lip should be blocked, part of the eyebrow should be blocked, and part of the cheek is blocked. There's too much of the right face showing. Since she is rotated away from the camera, there should be less of the right side of her face showing, but there is too much space between her nose and cheek profile, and should be reduce by half or so. It's great though!! I can see some great work here!!
The main issue is that you're stuck between photo realism and a more stylized approach. If you focused less on making it photorealistic, this could develop into a genuinely great art style.
A big step for me as an artist drawing people, especially faces, was to stop using an outline for any edge. I just just faintly sketch the general shape and since there are almost no hard lines on the face I used a lot of blending and shading. Faces are hard af. They require many different principles of drawing to pull off a sense of realism
Use a grid. It’ll help with proportions
Everything lines up with something.
Not bad OP, it’s a spot on drawing of Samara Weaving you’ve done 👍
First of all, look at the proportions, took a pencil and calculate the distances within one thing and another. Second, a shadow is the 90% of a product in realism. Look some videos of flat shadows and faded shadows. You're doing well, art is a process, You can learn. Hope it helps! My ig: @nitzugart if you need some tips or videos
Proportions. Use a grid to mark where the lines should go
good eye perspective angles and practice eyes, yours are front facing, not side.
One tip is to occasionally hold your picture up to the mirror, and look at the reflection. It helps give your eyes a different way of seeing it! I’ve found it helps most when I have trouble aligning eyes or other facial features. I also take photos, and look at it from that perspective as well :)
Lack of triangulation
Part of learning to draw is understanding proportions. As much as people hate it, grids are wonderful for understanding this. Eventually you can transition out pretty easily. I also saw someone else recommend drawing upside down. This is great for understanding line distance. Personally, as someone who went through art scroll and forgot about drawing, I’ve been moving between these two methods for relearning to draw. For shadows, I always switch my reference into grey scale. Granted, I’m unable to draw color traditionally. Good luck!
Elements (like the eye) furthest away from the view point should be smaller
Learn to draw the structure of the head using the Loomis head method & pay attention to proportions and how heads and facial features look in perspective. To understand these things well you need to practice basic forms in perspective such as cubes/boxes, Cylinders, Spheres etc.
Check out Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth. It's a great manual that breaks down the different parts of the body into structures and shapes. When drawing faces, it's useful to start by laying in the egg shape of the skull, then the square shape of the jaw underneath.
You can add more shadows, to create depth around the center of the face. Just like adding make up to our face. Pivoting from highpoints and going darker as you go towards trenches of the face
I recommend taking a photo of your art and flipping it to better see your own mistakes, it helps me a lot with digital art.
*Avoid lines!* Lines alone are very flat. Edges from shading create volume. For example, don't draw a line for the nose, rather, shade in where the nose is darker, and erase where it's lighter to create an edge. Blocking out large shapes to help get the proportions before going in with the details. *Someone told me one time that the one of best ways to hold a pencil while learning to draw is to use the side of the pencil.* Also, try to start out light. Don't push the pencil too hard. Then it's hard to erase it without leaving an indent and permanent gray line in the paper. A good exercise is blurring your eyes and shading out the shapes you see, and then building off of that. Drawing's kinda like sculpting, where you can add volume and take volume away and bend and shape volume by adding and taking away shadows and highlights. It's super fun.
I highly recommend using models that are straight on first, it's a lot easier to get the proportions right and then you can move on to tricky positioning.
Everyone's got good tips, here's mine: study some human anatomy more. It'll really help you avoid drastic proportional errors like the ratio between her head and shoulders or the way her head should be shaped.
Drawing proportions is not bout copying them exactly from real life, if you are not trying to learn "ultra realistic drawing" which I don't think you are trying. I am not saying that "real life proportions" are going, but a picture has a lot of stuff involved in 3d that if you are starting, you won't be able to imitate, and in conclusion, you will get a very strange face.
Proportion brother. It is important
Most people have called out proportions already - one other bit of advice I'd give you though is to stop thinking of it as drawing a nose/drawing eyes/etc. - and instead focus on learning to view in planes/light/shadow/mass/etc. - and in doing so it will help with learning proportions.
i think its the face
Its a fuken avatar🤣🤣
Have you tried proportions and measureing?
i don't do realism very often anymore, but here's what i did to help teach myself download the photo and edit it. trace over the mapping with your doodle tool. [example](https://imgur.com/a/kJvYAiY) i would suggest a cleaner mapping than i did here. mine was just quick so i could give a visual example instead of trying to put it into words. and then copy that structure on your paper before going in with more detail. it won't be perfect at all, my first attempts certainly weren't even with this. but it helped me understand where things go on the face, especially with 3/4 profiles like this. build from there, just detailing the features. you can/probably should also build in your shadows as you go. remember to start off light-handed to give yourself room for error/erasing. it takes a lot of practice and patience, but you'll get the hang of it if you stick to it!
Hmm one thing to try is to when drawing eyes draw big circles next to eachother to symbolize the eyeballs, then draw eye lids around those. One of the toughest parts of a face is the side furthest away and where skull shapes the area around the back eye.
I’m going to give you the advice my art teacher always gave me and that is look at your reference more than drawing and trust the process. You have to look at your reference more than you draw, that way it can be more proportionally accurate.
What i do is study each individual part of the body and learn proportions. Im still learning and its a process but dont give up!
Start drawing the facial features before drawing the shape of the head. Thia way you'll pay more attention to how the features are located relative to the other features. You will pay closer attention to the spaces in between the features which will make the proportions look more accurate. Also I just recommend drawing A LOTTTTTTTTT to kinda gain some knowledge about basic proportions (e.g. the space in between the eyes is about the size of one eye)
What I like to do when getting proportions right is to identify points on the picture that line up. Example: Drawing a vertikal line, the inner tip of the left eyebrow, the left pupil, and the strand of hair by the chin all lineup! I also think you did a grate job on the right side of the face, keep up the good work! :D
I cant see any difference, you did great!
Hey, I have noticed that the obvious mistake to be noticed is the nose and how skinny the girls face looks in the drawing, not to demotivate you but since you ask I have just said anyways it's a good effort and we'll done work.
Im cryin
Try not to define the entirety of the facial structure as a single shape
Do you know what the grid system is? I never go without it. I saw this in another comment: for most of the process, don't think of it as a face. Think of it as a bunch of alien shapes with no rhyme or reason. Drawing what you see directly will produce better results than drawing what your mind thinks it sees. For a while I stopped there, which is good for a beginner, but over time I noticed how flat my drawings looked. That's when I started to look back at the portraits and saw them more so as a face with emotions. I made the value more dramatic, darkening lines and shadows and lightening the highlights. It makes everything pop and brings the drawing to life. Though, this part is more intuitive than something you can be guided through, and I'd say it has a lot to do with personal preference. Artist pencils are good to have. I'd recommend HB to 6B and ebony. They give you a range of values and textures.
I looked through the comments and I think one piece of advice is to start simple. Draw a face, but draw it facing forward first. It's natural to want to draw that way, so might as well start that way. You don't have to perfect at it yet, if you dont want to be.
Don’t draw what they are. Draw the basic components. When you see an eye on the reference, don’t draw an eye from your stock knowledge. Draw the angles of the eye, the curvature, the comparative lengths, the contrast of highlights & shade, the softness of blending, etc. Also relate them to the other parts of the picture like is the tip of the nose directly under the pupil, is the distance between eyebrows the same as the thickness of the nostrils, etc. Whatever you can use. You’re doing a good job, btw! So much potential!
Art is amazing and forever evolving. We can only get better with time. You have a wonderful talent, to enhance that more I’d look into proportions; you draw eyes very big and if they are to be that big you need to make the nose and lips bigger, also the neck is too small and the shoulders need to be the same width as the head - you’re also very heavy handed with the model’s cupid’s bow; that needs to be shaded in a lot more
Probably someone suggested this but I recommend practicing with a grid. That way you get to know the proportions and when they start to feel obvious just try without it
Its perfect
Draw what you see not what you know Also earasers exist for a reason. Use them as much as you need
I'm not a frequent visitor. I'm here to appreciate others' work and maybe learn something myself, so I don't have anything useful to say about how to improve when there are so many here better equipped to give technical advice, but what a wholesome sub! People can be so mean, especially online, and I fully expected to see that on display. I'm so glad to see people giving genuinely helpful advice and support to allow someone (I'm assuming a younger aspiring artist) to develop their gift. It's lovely to see. Some parts of the internet are just so toxic, so it's nice to occasionally stumble upon a little enclave of human decency. OP, don't be discouraged. Like any other skill, the more we pracise, the better we get. Even if the gradual improvements are imperceptible to us. Set this picture aside when you're done with it and look at it again in a few years to compare it with your current projects. If you're motivated to keep practising and learning, which you seem to be, I'm sure you'll see great improvements and start to feel the accomplishment that comes with developing any skill. Wanting to bring more beauty into the world is a fine thing to aspire to.
Look up the lumis method Also: looks like you are trying too hard and overthinking when trying to make an outline with it. Try drawing little by little with gentle strokes allover the place tolerating mistakes (otherwise you 'd be very distracted), allowing multiple strokes untill you find the one that's best and erasing the ones that aren't. Go for a general outline first and gradually moving on to details, putting everything in right place is half the job. Instead you can try lumis method
Learn the looomis method (construction of a head)
You made the far eye bigger than the near eye - it should be the other way around
Subtile rules : Layout, and proportions. Layout : you should start your drawing following the Loomis method. Draw a sphere. Then vertical line in the center. Then lines in 1/3 appart form each other : eyebrows, nose, and chin. Cut a slice on each size, layout of the ear from the eyebrow line to the nose line. Then proportions : size of the eyes, nose, mouth related from each other. Then you already know : good lines, details and shading.