THIS IS A LITERAL GODSEND
BACKS AND SHOULDERS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HELL
GOD BLESS
(Source: martin-van-gurren)
Some building block references my Life Drawing teacher drew up for us for our Figure Drawing class. Thought I would impart the wisdom.
some notes I did during today’s stream.
Altho kisses are still hard to draw haha
I’ve been doing it wrong all this time.
Look at this program. LOOK AT IT
- It’s a great reference for drawing heads in different angles
- It has at least 100 sliders, so you can
recreate your fictional crushcreate many original characters- IT HAS A FREE VERSION
So basically, this program is the best
WOW THIS IS RIDICULOUSLY HELLA HELPFUL
The other day Rose asked if I’ve ever done a post about hair, and I haven’t. SO I WILL! YEAH!!
THE BASICS
First off, it helps to decide on a head shape. There are six different distinct head shapes; oval, rectangle, circle, square, heart, and triangle. The different head shape can help with defining your character, and also help in finding a hairstyle! Here’s a fairly long article about this; some hairstyles look better on different head shapes than others. Here’s another about hairstyles for different body types. This isn’t a hard and fast rule; just a general guideline (especially since that source is like OMG YOU MIGHT LOOK LIKE A BOY OH GOD NO!!)! It’s a good jumping off place, but you can put any sort of hair you want on any sort of character you want. Or your own head. Fuck da hair police.
Anyway, another thing to keep in mind is the part of the hair! There are studies that say that where you part your hair says something about you. I think that’s silly, but it’s a good think to think about when designing a character, especially if you’re concerned with keeping them consistent. If you have a character that parts their hair on the right, but sometimes forget and draw it parted to the left, people might notice the inconsistency. Although characters can have different hairstyles all the time, it’s much more common to have one (or just a few) that they generally wear all the time. Hair is one of those things that can help you recognize a person, so be sure to keep it consistent.
The head, at various angles, in perspective.
BEAUTIFUL REFERENCE
Omg we use this in my figure class WHAAAAT
kelseyum asked you: On the topic of help posts, do you have any tips for drawing the head in profile? It’s something I struggle with pretty consistently; for some reason I just can’t understand it. Anything you could say on the subject would be extremely helpful for me! (sorry if this sends twice; tumblr is being super weird!)
Ok, I hope this is helpful! It helps to have a vague guideline/set of rules in mind, and this is what I generally thing of. When you’re drawing the skull in profile, you can basically draw it in a box and then divide it into four quadrants. The ear is located right in the middle; you can find other things from there. The eye generally lines up with the top of the ear, the nose usually comes from the middle of the eyes/pupil and goes down to about halfway through the quadrant it’s in. The edge of the jaw lines up with the ear. Obviously that’s a super rough guideline, but it can really help you out!
The biggest thing I think people have problems with is making sure you draw enough skull onto the back of the head. That’s why drawing a square helps - if you’re too far from the edge of the square, you don’t have enough skull for a brain, haha.
Once you have that in mind, you can build upon it! Not everyone will fall right into this pattern; some people might have really big ears or ears that are higher/lower, some people have big foreheads, some people have big noses. If you’re really stuck, Google some profiles and try and draw them with these guidelines; it’ll help you figure out what goes where!
*A* Hope that helps a bit!
Heads Tutorial Part III: Basic Construction
So to the left we have my simplified versions of the skull and the muscles of the face. These are pretty much notes on all the important lines and planes of the face that would be pretty much universal. I have them pretty much burned into my memory and these are what I always try to be mindful of these guidelines while drawing, but I don’t actually draw these.
That’s what’s on the right. These are the basic construction lines that show my approach when I’m actually drawing characters. Note that when I draw these the lines are light and quick. If you are having trouble drawing circles and lines, I recommend just taking a whole page of drawing nothing but lines, curves, and circles. These will be nonsense scribbles but just remember that this will loosen up and train your hand for making these motions which will make it easier for when you’re drawing actual characters.
So on to the actual drawing
1) I start off with a sphere. You may say circle, but no, it’s a sphere with three axes. Remember to try to think in three dimensions. The axes will help you with knowing where the center of the face is, where the eyes go, and where the ears go.
2) On the sphere I draw a shape that represents the jaw. Where the jaw connects to the head is the center of the side of the head, so I’ll just extend that axis beyond the sphere. Also at this point I make a new curve that extends to the edge of the I do the same on the face of the sphere to help determine the placement of features of the nose and mouth.
3) This is where those mental guidelines really start helping me figure where to place other guidelines on the face to start placing some shapes for the features. On the horizontal axis is where you place the eyes. The center of the face is generally where the bridge of the nose extends and it goes about all the way down to the edge of the sphere. The mouth generally goes at the mid point between where the nose ends and where the chin ends. I’ve also placed a few guidelines for cutting off the sides of the sphere (since our heads aren’t round) and the brow lines.
Heads Tutorial Part II - Facial Muscles
Knowing the placement of major facial muscles will help you when dealing with expressions. Even if you don’t know the names and functions of each muscle in the face, you can probably tell which ones are used to do things like raise eyebrows, smile, and open your mouth. In blue, I marked important lines that I use often in regards to expressions, but I’ll won’t be getting into that just yet. What’s important now is just knowing where they are.
While I tried my best to draw significant muscles, my diagram is still simplified. It’s always a good idea when using references to use multiple sources, that way you can see how they vary and how they are the same. The similarities are important for grasping general concepts that are the same for any human or humanoid you draw. The differences are important for the protrayal of variety in design (more on this later).
Basically in representational art, you are building figures and objects from the bare bones and up. Of course it would be way too time consuming if you did it to this extent with every drawing, so that’s why exercises where you redraw anatomical diagrams of the facial muscles over and over again are so useful. Do it enough times and you’ll know exactly where things go without having to actually draw all the little details. So more work now will be less work later, got it?
Even if you are a cartoonist (and I consider myself one) knowing these details is vital for portraying convincing cartoons. Anyone who thinks they can get away drawing toons without honing such knowledge deserve a flogging. :|
