How to Draw Masculine Features (feat. Daniel Radcliffe)

Hello everyone, in this video we're going to be drawing male features, featuring our favorite boy wizard Daniel Radcliffe. To start we're just going to use some simple materials, regular number two pencil, a blending stump, and an eraser. We're going to start by just roughing out a basic face shape. It doesn't have to be perfect right away, just start with a simple shape and then begin dividing it out and laying out your proportions. So if you watched my other proportion videos, we divide the face in half vertically and then horizontally. The eyes usually sit at the halfway point, the nose about halfway between the eyes and the chin, more or less, it's usually different for everyone. And the lips are usually about halfway between the nose and the chin. Some things to keep in mind is when we're drawing hair, you have to remember the hair sits above the scalp, so that halfway point of the eyes is going to chain, or is going to look like it's not halfway, but it is. So you can see I'm citing angles, I'm laying out areas where the jawline starts, where the neck lays in. Basically when you're drawing from a photograph or from life, you use your pencil to block out those areas and figure out what things match up with other things. So our pencil is our best tool when it comes to figuring out proportions and laying out angles. Another thing you want to keep in mind is that as you're drawing, start light, so draw light until you get it right. I can't say it enough, you really don't want to get hung up on details right away. This is something I learned from a lot of experience when I was younger, in that I always want to do the eyes first. And so I'd start with the eyes and then I'd kind of end up getting one completely finished and then realize it's in the wrong spot and have to erase the whole thing. So laying out these proportions, you know the face is about five eye widths wide, so here I am checking those dimensions, making sure they're where they are. The nose lines up in between the eyes. There is like a slight slant to his face in this picture, so I'm kind of just leaning everything just slightly to the side. And so you can see that I'm not really putting a huge amount of detail into the eyes, I'm just kind of laying out where major features are going. And again, keeping or continuing to check all of those placements to make sure everything stays the same, because we may lay the lines down for the proportions and then completely ignore them. So good idea to keep checking constantly to make sure everything's where it needs to be. Now when I start drawing the other eye, I'm kind of making very light little sight lines across from the first eye to make sure that the middle lines up, the top lines up, and the bottom of the eyelid also lines up. So just drawing some quick little lines across to make sure everything's in the same place. That way the eye doesn't end up being too big or too small. Generally this is a good tool for making two of the same thing in the same place. Once I start to get my features in place, then I can start to add a little bit more detail. And like I said, you don't want to go gung-ho immediately, so just slowly build it up. Make sure everything's where it needs to be before you get too into it, just in case you need to erase it or change it. What I'm doing now is just starting to block in some values and different shadows. I'm doing it really lightly just to give me an idea of where those shadows are, and that helps start to define the figure a little bit more. So just like with details, we slowly build up our values as well, just in case you need to erase. As I start to draw the mouth, I drop down sight lines from the eyes. So I just look at the picture, I see where the corners of the mouth line up with the eyes. If he were to be looking straight ahead at me, that would be usually right at the inside corner of the iris or at the pupil. So in this case, it's the inside corner of one of the irises and the outside corner of the other, since his eyes are looking off to the side. I'm starting to just kind of lay in where the stubble is going, kind of the darker areas and middle values, to just start to get an idea of the placement of the shadows. And here I've grabbed a piece of scrap paper, and this is an invaluable tool for you. This will keep your hand from smudging, and being left-handed, I smudge everything. So this is the best free little tool that you can have. Just grab a scrap piece and throw it in there. Now I'm starting to add in some more details to the eye. I feel like when people are starting to learn how to draw, they always have a hard time sort of differentiating between male eyes and female eyes. And it's a really subtle difference. I think the biggest difference is actually just the eyelashes. Obviously, most men don't often wear mascara, so the eyelashes aren't going to be as defined as one would be if they were wearing makeup. So when you draw the lashes on a male eye, it's often not quite as apparent. So you might have like one or two little lashes that poke out as compared to a whole bunch. The lower lashes usually aren't as obvious either, so you don't want to overdo it. In this case, what I did is just a really subtle shading. It's not even an individual lash. It's just kind of a little plop of value. The brows also tend to kind of hang over a little bit more. And obviously, everybody looks different. But oftentimes, men's brows are just a little bit heavier. And not necessarily the eyebrows. Granted, Daniel Radcliffe's eyebrows are pretty intense. But the skin itself over the brow tends to fold over the eyelid just a little bit more. So those are some things that start to differentiate between men's and women's eyes. In terms of other features, the jawline is really key. So men tend to have a more pronounced jawline. Whereas women's tend to flare out more around the cheekbones and less at the jaw. I feel like features are very subtle. They can be pretty ambiguous. And small little changes can make a huge amount of difference as to whether you're drawing male or female people. Because the features, if you separated them, could look exactly the same. If you're only looking at the nose or only looking at the mouth, there's just little indicators in how everything's put together that make it look different. And it's all in shadows and placement and values. So it's very subtle. And it just takes practice to get into it. So as I've been drawing, I've been going back and forth between using my pencil and using the blending stump. So the blending stump can kind of smooth out your values. But the only thing that tends to be a problem is after you use it, it picks up a lot of your values. So it makes it lighter. So you need to go back and add darker values with your pencil. And then more details as you go along. At this point, I'm starting on the other eye. And I feel like I always hear people say, well, I did one. Now I can't do the other. And I hear you. I feel like artists generally are more comfortable drawing features, especially the ones facing their dominant hand. So I'm left-handed. So drawing on the left side makes a lot more sense to me. It's a lot easier. So drawing on the right side is much more of a challenge. So I'm just sticking on this eye and working it out. And it was very challenging to do this piece. So you can kind of see me leaving it alone and doing other stuff, going back to it. So one side is always easier than the other. Don't get hung up on it. You just have to keep pushing through and really just observing the features that you're drawing and comparing as you're working. I feel like usually when I get really stuck on something and I'm not sure what's wrong with it or how to fix it, I just move to a different place on the face and work on that area for a little bit. That way, I don't get too hung up on it. So try not to focus on one area for too long. Move around. Focus on the whole face. And another tip to kind of help you make sure that you are really focusing on the whole is to take a step back. So maybe just stop what you're doing for a little bit and hold your picture like five or six feet away from you. Doing that will allow you to see the whole rather than focusing on the details. So you can see if everything's in the right place much better when it's further away. You can see if you've used enough values. This is a big one. I always used to draw really, really lightly when I was younger and I thought my stuff was so awesome. But that's probably because I'm blind and I work about two inches from my paper when I'm drawing. So it looked really great up close, but then the second I hung it up on a wall and looked at it, I was like, oh, I can't even see anything. So that's really what taught me about value is taking a step back and seeing it from afar. It's one of the best tools that I ever learned. As you can see, I'm also adding in more shadows. And some things about shadows is that they always follow the musculature. So the way your muscles lay on your face and also the bony structures. So the structures of your skull that stick out, those are going to be highlighted. And then usually the areas underneath them are going to be in shadow. So like I'm doing the cheekbone area and the muscle around the mouth. And that's really going to make it look like he's clenching his jaw just a little bit. So really, studying anatomy is a fantastic tool to understand how shadows work on your face and how the muscles and bones affect the way light falls on your face. I know I'm getting really academic, but it's a great tool. When I do the hair, I usually just like block in areas of dark values and use my eraser to pull out highlights. I tend to get kind of bored doing hair, honestly, so I'd never finish it. My apologies. I just wanted to go home and make some dinner. But as I'm working on this, you can really see that I'm not using anything fancy. I'm just using a regular pencil that you buy for school. So the point is, you don't need special supplies. Just get out and draw.