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Draw this profile. |
Drawing people does require the ability to draw, but it
also requires lots of measuring which is a very right-brained,
logical thing to do. Even if you're not going for total
realism in your drawing, knowing some basic facial measurements will
help you to make your drawing look more like a face.
Everybody knows the placement of the various facial
elements - the eyes are above the nose, which is above the
mouth, but how far above? We're looking at the profile of the face because it's
a bit easier to draw than the face when it's straight-on.
Usually, when you look at a profile, the eyes, nose and mouth
are the first things your vision gravitate to even though, comparatively,
those elements are a small percentage of the total head. The
cheek, ear, and back of the head are much more prominent than
the face, so when we draw a profile, we have to keep that in
mind.
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The "lopsided egg" |
Let's draw this old mugshot on this page. Get your lap desk out and put a sheet or two of paper on it and get comfortable in front of your computer. Sharpen your 5B pencil and have your eraser handy. If you'd like to print out the photo we'll be working with, go ahead.
To
start a profile drawing you might want to lightly draw a
"lopsided egg" shape to get the placement and
general size down on your paper.
The
eye is halfway between the bottom of the chin and the top of
the skull. So the eye will be an excellent place to base our
measurements from. So you might want to lightly draw a
straight, horizontal line through you egg at it's midpoint.
Use your pencil to measure from the top of the "egg"
to the chin to find and place the line.
Rather
than drawing the eye first, you might want to start with the
nose. Measure the length of your subject's nose from the bridge to it's
tip and lightly draw an angled line that has all the bumps and
curves of your subjects nose. It won't be a straight line,
because your subject's nose isn't straight. Hold your pencil's
eraser vertically at the tip of your subject's nose so the tip
of your pencil is pointing up, see the angle
that is created between your pencil and the nose? Look at the
angle that the nose creates in comparison to the straight
vertical edge of your paper and try and approximate the nose
angle you measured. You're going to
have to eyeball
the length of the nose because you don't have anything in
your drawing to measure it against.
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The nose and the "bumps" of
the lips. |
Now
with the nose lightly drawn in, move down and draw the contour
of the lips. They'll be two curved "bumps", the top
one may protrude out a bit more, and also be a bit smaller than
the bottom lip. But of course, the sizes of any element on the
face depends on the face you're drawing.
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