How to sketch a face for beginners (real time tutorial)

Hello. Today I'm doing the most highly requested video ever. Ever, babes. I'm gonna give y'all a tutorial on how I draw faces. By no means am I a licensed professional. I shouldn't really be giving advice, to be honest. However, I have been drawing faces for a pretty long time, and over the years, I've consistently gotten the question on how to draw faces. So I'm just here to bestow some of that advice onto you. So grab your sketchbooks, grab a pencil, grab an eraser, grab a glass of water, cuz I know y'all are dehydrated. Dehydrated as ****. And with all that being said, let's get into the video. Today we're using the Canson Mixed Media Sketchbook, and it's 7 by 10 inches, and it's 98 pounds, meaning that it's pretty good paper, and it can hold a lot of weight. The other materials I'm using today include this Pentel Graph Gear 500, and I'm also gonna be using this high-polymer eraser. I'm just gonna open up my sketchbook to a random length page, and we are gonna get started. We're gonna be using this really lovely reference photo. And to start, we're just making a circle for the head, and because it's a straight-on pose, we're actually gonna divide the circle in half like so. The next thing I look for is seeing the ratio between the length and the height of the face. I would say this face is about 1.5 by 1, so it's not an actual square, it's a bit of a rectangle. So I'm just gonna make a little box here for myself. I'm also seeing that the jaw is at an angle and not squared off, so I'm just gonna indicate that here. The face opens up wider towards the top, so I'm just kind of marking out the basic face shapes. And again, these are super simple sketches that we're gonna fix out later. I'm just gonna make a straight line here, and I'm gonna make another straight line for the nose, and slowly build out where I think the face would be. Build out the eye shape really quickly. You can already see that it's just two ovals, a line for the nose, and just a top line and a down line for the mouth. We're just getting the basic, basic shapes down. Now usually, the eyes are one eye width apart. So if this is one eye length, there'll be one eye length in between from where the other eye starts. Another rule of thumb is that the nostrils will start and end at the tear ducts of the face. So if the tear ducts are right here at the end of the eye, they'll actually be nostrils right here. And for the rest of the proportions of the face, you're just gonna have to map it out and kind of eye it to see where the other features are. The next step is super fun and fresh, y'all. You just find where the neck starts. And this usually happens towards the end of the eyes, is where the neck kind of goes. Always look for where the shoulders start at the neck and see where that is in relation to the chin. And then I'm just gonna really simply map out the hair using just some basic angles. Ears are usually at the bottom of the nostrils and end to the top of the eyes. Obviously, each face varies and that's what makes everyone unique. So you're gonna want to map out the basic proportions and then adjust things based on what you see. So I'm just going in, y'all. So I'm just going in, y'all, making some basic shapes, mapping where the hair is. And that is my very, very basic shape. I'm also gonna very loosely imply a brow here. I would say the brow is a bit higher than the eye, nothing too cray-cray. I'm seeing that the model has very almond-shaped eyes and they start around here. So the end of the eye is actually higher than the tear ducts. So I'm just gonna do that for both of the eyes. I'm also seeing that her tear ducts are pretty sharp angle-wise. So I'm just gonna build a sharper connection of these points rather than a more rounded part. And because I'm super impatient, I'm actually just gonna fill the pupils in. Usually people do this on the last step. I'm just gonna slowly reshape the eyes to get it where it's not creepy. And her nose is snatched, y'all. So I'm just gonna start building out her nose. Also, I'm doing a little shadow right here because the light is coming from this direction. And because the nose is protruding from the face, then there would be a cast shadow right here. I'm just gonna adjust the eyes as I go because it's not looking too hot. Another key tip when you're shading is to shade in the direction of where the skin would go. So the nose was coming down, so I shaded downwards. But to imply that there's like a gradual shift from the cheek to the nose, I just shade at an angle like this rather than up and down. A lot of artists say that the ends of the lips actually align with the middle of the pupil. And so you're just gonna see where that varies for each model. And because I have the face kind of built out, and now I'm just gonna go and start blocking out more shapes and slowly rendering it out more and more and more. The brows... I kind of fucked up this eye shape. Uh-oh. Yeah, she's lifted a bit more than I thought. Again, implying the curvature of the nose, so shading at a kind of curved angle. Girl, I just fucked that up. No. The reason why we do these lines so loose is because you can fix it later. So right now, I'm realizing that the chin is a bit higher. Also, I'm noticing that the jaw ends just after the end of the eye. So I'm just gonna slowly build that out. And then there's the cheekbones, so I'm gonna add another curve right here. Dips in a tiny bit and then goes back out. I'm just gonna go back and soften some features. A little microblading moment. This ear was a bit much, so we're gonna bring her in a bit. I literally hate ears. Like, ears can literally just go away. I might just Van Gogh it and chop them off. You can see here, I'm not being detailed with the hair at all. You just simply imply it, and you're not gonna draw each individual strand unless you're doing a hyper-realistic photo. And if I were to sculpt out each individual hair for this particular sketch, it would totally take away from the facial features. So we're gonna maintain the focus on the face. Slowly but surely, y'all, we are getting somewhere. Usually for pretty much every model, there's a tiny, tiny shadow between the brows. And this is just because the natural face shape is like this. The natural face shape dips down here. So obviously when light is coming, you're gonna want to shade this part because it's not reaching the surface as close as it is to the forehead. So there'll be a tiny shadow right here, and that's what we're gonna imply right there. I'm just gonna erase that because that was shit. And also, I'm seeing that her eye is curving a bit more. I'm not sure how I feel. I'm not sure how to feel. Again, this is just a super simple sketch, y'all. Do not come for me. I'm simply just drawing how I would normally draw. Because the light is coming from this direction, I'm gonna make a shadow beneath the lips and the chin. And this shadow is gonna be curved and not just a straight line because the face is curved. Okay, I've been avoiding this now. We're gonna find where the forehead is. We are not gonna give her a Peyton Manning five head. We're gonna actually look at where the forehead is, and we're gonna slowly sculpt it out. Now I'm gonna shade in the hair. Very cute, very fun and fresh. And if you want to get funky, you can just do some tiny hairlines that are coming off the edge of the hairline. I'm really just going everywhere across the face at this point, just shading where I see fit. Now you may be tempted to just shade the entire side, but that is not how light works. There's always gonna be a little reflected light right here, and that's because when light comes from this direction, it's actually gonna bounce off of the skin here and a wall here to bounce back onto the surface of the face. So there is gonna be a little reflected light, and that's why our deepest shadow is actually just above this area. We are getting somewhere, y'all. It is starting to look like a face. I feel like hopefully it started looking like a face a bit before this point, but it is truly getting somewhere right now. I'm gonna call this sketch done. I think it's good enough. Let me know what y'all think. If you like it, if you hate it, let me know. If y'all have any questions, definitely comment them down below and I'll answer as best as I can. And if you guys like me, my art, or want to follow my journey as an art student in LA, you can subscribe to this channel. It's a fun time here. And I think that's the end of this video, y'all. Best end of this video.