Learning to Sketch: Faces Continued

Learning proportions is a vital part of drawing faces.  Up until today, I pretty much just copied what I saw in a photo.  But no matter what I tried, the faces were either not looking realistic or the characters were not looking the age I wanted them to (mostly looking older than I wanted).

Here are a few more faces I drew last night.

It really didn't take long to figure out that there were some aspects of these sketches that were off. I obviously need some instruction, so I went to You Tube to search "draw teen" and came up with a very helpful video giving step by step instructions of how to draw the proper proportions for babies, teens, and adults.  Let me just say... VERY interesting!  And it makes much more sense to me now.  Here's my attempt at taking a quick 20 minute class from Mark Crilley on You Tube. He even gave tips on how to turn a 22 year old adult woman into a middle aged woman. Pretty cool! I look forward to taking these techniques and applying them to my future face sketches of kids.

And here's the video. Many thanks to Mr. Crilley for his help!

Learning to Sketch: Faces

The "newbie" artist's journey continues. For the past couple of days I've focused on faces.  I started with two larger sketches of my two girls yesterday. The one on the right is of my youngest at about three (I did this one first). The one on the left is of my older daughter when she was about six.  I chose this second photo to sketch as a challenge to myself because she's missing her front teeth here. Not crazy how it turned out, but enjoyed exploring shading and tone.

These are each sketched on 8 1/2 x 11 pieces of copy paper, so they're about 5x7 inches.

Today I splurged and purchased myself some drawing paper.  So my very first sketch in my drawing pad is of my son. He's almost 15 now, but this is sketched from a photo of him at his ninth birthday party.  I found that I had a lot more control over shading and it was much easier to sketch on a smaller scale. This one is about 2 1/2 x 2 inches. 

 

My Weekend Homework assignment to myself:

Draw seven more faces at this smaller scale with different expressions & angles.

Learning to Sketch: Reading Under Tree

This week I chose to sketch, yet another photo of my daughter reading under a tree in our backyard.  I finished the sketch, but something just wasn't right to me. I didn't like how her face looked. Not only did it not look like my daughter, it didn't seem realistic.

So I decided to start over on the front of her face, making her forehead rounder and longer. Then I added some freckles.  I like this one much better, but it looks more like my 12 year old than my 8 year old. I'm sure it has something to do with the proportions and angles of her face and head, but I haven't figured that out yet. I'm pretty sure it has to do with the face needing to be fuller.  I'll play with that more next time.

Learning to Sketch: Riverside Playtime

As I continute the journey of jumping off of the "newbie" learning to be an illustrator cliff, today I chose to sketch a photo of my youngest at three, playing by the riverside. I have so much to learn about proportion, shading, lighting, and well... drawing in general.  But it sure feels great to get in there with nothing but a pencil and a blank piece of paper and draw.

Learning to Sketch: Let the Journey Begin!

I've decided to throw away my fear of being an author/illustrator and just go with my gut, which is saying GO FOR IT!  I thought it would be fun to keep a sketching journal here on my blog, so here goes.

Last week I did a quick sketch of a cute little Gerbil (I thought it would be productive to make a grid on the photo and paper, but found that it took longer to make the grid than it did to sketch.  So I'm over that! Probably won't happen again.)

And here's my new friend sketched yesterday. (Awe, isn't he cute!)

Here's to trying new things and going with your gut!

 

*Cheers*