How I learned to draw better faces in a week

did I learn anything from all this practice was it a waste of time I was missing something really fundamental something so simple that I'm shocked I didn't realize it for myself so I've been drawing for a while now but I have a confession to make I don't actually know how to draw faces I've been faking it the whole time it's all just a ruse you've been bamboozled I just draw some Big Shiny round eyes at a DOT for the nose a triangle for the mouth and call it done okay but for real for someone just making stuff up I know it's not that bad but look how far my work is from this or this or even this I want to learn how to draw like this I'm going to put myself through an intensive face drawing boot camp and see if I actually get any better at drawing faces so here's how my faces look right now like I said not the worst they're very simplified and stylized but they lack a little bit of structure there's nothing wrong with the simple style of course but I want to try taking it further it seems that I'm not really understanding what facial features look like or what shape they truly are I'm just drawing an eye like this because that's how I've always done it well that comes to an end today it's time for some learning so anyway before I can learn how to draw faces I have to understand what a head actually looks like and for me personally the best way of doing that is to draw it from every angle an actual head is really complicated though and it's going to take ages to remember all of these details so let's start with an abstraction something a little simpler something a little easier to memorize this is the assaro head it's a simplified version of the human head that's broken down into planes typically it's used to practice shading even though I personally didn't do that this time some people might be thinking at this point wait this head looks pretty realistic and that they're not actually interested in drawing realism that they want to draw anime or something more stylized and don't worry I feel the same way but you have to remember any style at all including the anime style is still based in reality therefore it's pretty important to know what reality looks like so you can make your anime girls look even better unfortunately right after I finished this I realized I'd missed a very important step you know what's underneath the face it's the skull and in all of my years of drawing I've never actually studied the skull I've definitely studied the skeleton before because I've studied anatomy in general after all how can you draw muscles if you don't know where the muscles are attached the same logic applies for the face so it's time to draw the skull from every angle as well when doing studies like these 3D models are a really useful tool because you can spin them around and see how they look from every angle I like to look through sketchfab.com for models I put links in the description for all the resources I used while I was drawing these skulls I also found it super useful to draw some bounding boxes around them it helps me put the skulls properly in perspective by the way this is where all that box drawing practice you've been doing this is where it might come in handy these drawings are not perfect in fact there's tons of mistakes so I know I'll definitely need to repeat this exercise a few more times in the future but I did learn a lot from it so that's all that counts so why learn to draw appealing faces in the first place well the first thing you have to remember is that appealing is not the same thing as conventionally attractive anime kwaii faces faces are usually the focal point of an illustration and making the focal point more appealing will in general make your overall illustration more appealing as well also remember I'm a YouTuber now right and I need to make thumbnails do many clickable thumbnails have in common that's right it's faces I need to get better at drawing faces to make a living my rent payment depends on it now that I have a basic understanding of the structure of the head it's time to start drawing from reference I just use a bunch of photographs I found from Pinterest or Google Images this is not my first time doing this exercise so here are some older ones I've done they're not bad but I don't think they look very appealing I was trying to draw a pretty girl here but she doesn't really look that good and I wasn't really sure what was missing it's clear that I don't really understand what it is exactly that makes a face appealing is it a problem with knowledge or with stylization or is it something else altogether have I relied on anime Shands for too long I keep trying but it's just not working in particular what I struggle with the most is eyes I have always admired artists who can draw beautiful eyes in various levels of stylization but I've never been able to replicate it and I don't know why I end up doing some style studies of TB Choy because while her eyes are simple they look so good and my copy just doesn't look as good I don't understand what's missing at this point though a certain benevolent backseating Frog who wishes to remain anonymous stops by to save the day yet again with some critical advice she pointed out that in fact I was missing something really fundamental something so simple that I'm shocked I didn't realize it for myself I was not in fact drawing eyes in perspective here are some guidelines lines that the Frog Drew for me you have to make sure that the corners of the eyes and the bottom Lids line up properly wait this might be a game changer this was actually so obvious in hindsight I could see results immediately after I started implementing this and I was so much happier with my drawings ah this is this is so good like look how much better like this character she looks so eh even the compared to my like look this looks so so eh the eyes are so much more expressive and fun now she's still kind of stylized but that's okay the Frog also gave me more great advice when drawing from reference take the time to appreciate what you love about the person's face maybe it's their delicate eyelashes or their soft lips or their gentle expression this can help you emphasize the elements of their face that you find most appealing let's just draw this fine lad here good good good good good look at that hair that is gorgeous why was it even drawing pretty girl girls I could have been drawing pretty men not to mention their haircuts are much cleaner and easier to draw so I studied a bunch of these photographs but then I had to move on because as I previously mentioned I have no actual interest in learning how to draw realism it's time to use the knowledge I gained to draw what I actually want to draw pretty anime girls and boys now we're going to do some style studies also known as Master studies and the first person that we're going to study is of course the helpful mysterious frog here's the art that we're going to copy in particular please pay attention to the delicate gorgeous beautiful detailed facial features and those eyelashes I love them so much the colors are tasteful and beautiful but colors are too hard so I'm just going to do it in grayscale so this is how you do a style study don't just blindly copy what you see but try your best to get into the artist's head and understand why they made certain decisions this isn't always easy I was how ever pretty lucky that the literal artist I was trying to copy from was in my twitch chat coaching me about her style in classic artist fashion she also warned me to not copy her or else I would copy her bad habits I ignored her but since this was a relatively older piece she didn't like the old lips she Drew so she provided me with a brand new lips tutorial which I happily followed she also taught me that making liberal use of the smudge tool could help me capture the subtle gradations that I love so much from her work here's my attempt at her beautiful fanner of Chief from chobits obviously it's nowhere near as good as hers but I feel like I understand a little better how to draw pretty faces from this the next artist on my list is the inevitable Yony may but I'm going to try to imitate her anyway her style is dynamic full of movement and a bit more stylized she uses a lot of circles in her composition the way she draws the nose and mouth is pretty minimal in classic anime fashion but the eyes are so gorgeous and to be honest I was surprised to find out that she actually Paints in the waterline and the tear duct for those of you who don't know the waterline is this little pink strip of skin right next to the eyeball my general impression of the anime style is that people don't typically draw the waterline or tear duct but y yamamay actually makes her waterline super bright visible and saturated it looks amazing and her lines are so fluid and stylish as well when I personally do style studies I like to avoid using complicated layer Styles because honestly I don't really understand them I find that it's more useful to just eyeball them and then manually try to pick the colors myself that seems to help my understanding a bit more here is my attempts I didn't copy the paint splashes cuz I was lazy but I think I did okay up next we have of course Tam mik picazo her art style is very eye-catching more graphic and uses a lot of strong shapes and bright colors and definitely more stylized than the previous two Styles and within those shapes there's just a lot of stuff bright Colour pops highlights but it's not random see this blue Highlight it looks a little bit where you would normally paint the reflected light underneath the lashes you would use a more desaturated or cooler color but she's picked a bright bright blue and in Mika picazo's case she doesn't actually draw the waterline but to my big surprise she actually still draws a stylized tear duct honestly I struggled with this style study a lot more than the previous two there was so much detail it was honestly kind of overwhelming and I had a hard time understanding her decision- making in places such as the eye but despite that I think I managed to grasp a little bit of her sense of Aesthetics so let's move on to the final style study this is 82 pigeon and she's amazing she has a super precise lovely Style with very detailed Shadow shapes and incredibly cool shap shape language with subtle and delicate occlusion Shadows her fundamentals are just crazy insanely good it's really intimidating honestly I'm not even sure I can pull this off I'll still try my best though shockingly though this was actually very fun to do maybe because her style is so heavily based in foundational principles I found it easy to understand though hard to imitat she also posts pictures of her process which helped a lot I tried to copy her process a bit but I don't think I copied her colors very well they're pretty off but still I think the style study did its job remember that when you're studying and practicing they don't actually have to be perfect if you manage to learn something then that's good okay time for my final exam did I learn anything from all this practice was it a waste of time to find out I'm just going to draw myself again I tried to incorporate elements that I loved from each artist I studied but I think I was most influenced by pigeon I started with this rough sketch since eyes were my particular weakness I tried extra hard on those specifically I try to express the waterline and tear duct more clearly and elegantly I don't think I've ever drawn such detailed eyes before like pigeon and the Frog I also smudged in some occlusion Shadows to make my liner look softer and more refined and delicate and since I draw the eye so detailed I had to draw the hair detail to match too this is also something I've never done before and I'm surprised that I could do it honestly I'm shocked at how well the liner came out I just never thought I was capable of it I thought I wasn't able to draw detailed art turns out I just never really tried and because I was so inspired by 82 pigeon I also tried to copy her coloring process it's really easy to understand look I'll show you just start with a normal line art layer as usual and then put some Flats underneath try not to make the flats too contrasty because you'll be painting the Shadows on another layer then with a new layer on hard light blending Mode start painting in some texture and occlusion Shadows occlusion Shadows are the parts that are darker when surfaces are touching or if there are little crevices and the most important part is that these Shadows are not affected by lighting you don't have to think about the direction of the light just yet again make sure that there isn't too much contrast because you'll be painting the main Lighting in afterwards you don't want to make the AK of painting a shadow within a shadow over here I made the mistake of using the airbrush too much which made my character look really weird and pillowy batting myself from the airbrush and sticking to hard brushes made it look a lot better you can always smudge out your brushes later on but that depends on you I'm just not very good at the airbrush if you're using just Grays at this point it can make your character look a little washed out so try experimenting with some different colors until you find something that you're happy with and now time for the final layer we're painting in the light and Shadow Shadow just make another hard light layer on top of that and start painting shadows in with a hard brush it's just actually cell shading you can also try adding some saturation on this layer a good place to add the saturation is at the edge of the shadow on the skin something called subsurface scattering tends to make this area redder and more saturated and that's it what do you think I'm actually very proud of it I didn't even know painting something like this was something I was even capable of sometimes you just have to try and go beyond your comfort zone if I compare it with my older attempts I think it looks so much better and also it was a lot of fun I'll definitely be drawing more portraits in the future if you enjoyed this video draw some detailed eyes on the Subscribe button thank you so much for watching and see you next time bye-bye is my mic on here it goes okay but for real but since she didn't but since was but since but since this but since the but since how do you say the word since

Channel: pikat

Views: 468,056

Keywords: vtuber, art, drawing

Id: u7xcWi_6yIQ

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2024