Art class lesson 6

I had planned to move in a different direction with this, teaching how to fill in the stick figure drawings, but something I noticed with the most recent batch of sketches changed my mind.

You all did a wonderful job drawing the heads and placing the the eyes and nose along the lines but I noticed something that I should have mentioned in that lesson which I will explain now.

First, remember to draw lightly when laying out the drawing, it will make life so much simpler down the road.

The facial features get laid out on the head similarly to how the body and joints are.  Instead of using a “head” to measure we use the eye.  A typical human face is 5 eyes wide (one eye wide between the two eyes and one on either side), the ears are directly even with the eyes and eyebrows.  A closed mouth is one eye wide as is an average nose.  An average smile is two eyes wide.

For measuring up and down you turn the eye sideways with an average of seven eyes tall. You have one eye at the midpoint, three up into the hair, and three below the midpoint–one eye down from the midpoint  covering the nose two covering the mouth and chin.

This is why some people look odd–maybe their eyes are slightly bigger or smaller, the nose is wider or thinner.  The same goes for drawing other life forms–an anime character has bigger eyes while an ogre is often drawn with an extra wide bridge of the nose and with the face scrunched towards the bottom of the head instead of even.  A baby will have slightly larger eyes as well while an old man may have smaller more shrunken features.

Being able to draw an average face will help you draw more interesting ones.:)  Also, as you practice you will find that you only have o draw little lines or a few notches to know where everything goes.

And so today I want you to practice laying out a face, and look around at real faces to see how Godd put thhe faces around you together.  You will find that everyone is different but that there are similarities in many, also you will find that you can start to see better how to draw different faces if you learn to measure them using their own eyes.