Now that you’ve learn how to draw the individual features of the face, I’d like to give you some general tips and advice on drawing faces in order to save you some time and frustration. (Click here for more information on how to draw realistic eyes.)
Don’t worry if you catch yourself making these mistakes. You’re only human. The important part is that you catch and fix them. By following theses tips, you’ll help improve your portrait drawing skills.
Here we go:
Mistake #1: Not Keeping the Entire Picture in Mind
I really struggled with this one when I was starting out. I would look at the model picture and begin drawing right away starting with the eyes and ignoring the rest of the picture.
What would happen is that the proportions of my drawing will be off. The features would be either too big or too small compared to each other.
What’s more, I would run out of space on my drawing pad before I can even finish the drawing.
Don’t make the same mistake I did. Give some thoughts to where everything is going to be before you start drawing.
You can do this by making some light marks on your drawing paper to mark out where everything is going to go.
Mistake #2: Not Starting At All Because You Want Everything To Be Perfect
There’s nothing worse than staring at an intimidating blank piece of drawing paper and not know where to start. Or you might be so scared of making mistakes, wanting your drawing to be perfect, that you erase every stroke as soon as you make them.
This is call art anxiety and it is not very fun at all. Every artist has gone through this at one time or another.
So here’s a tip to avoid that. Warm up your drawing hand and muscles by doodling before starting a drawing project. Don’t worry about making mistakes. Since you are not really drawing anything, you can’t really make a mistake!
This will get to you loosen up and free you of any anxiety and drawing will become fun again.
Mistake #3: Not Practicing Drawing From Real Life
The reason I know this to be a mistake is because I’ve done this myself. I though that there was no difference between drawing from a black and white photo and drawing from a real life model.
But there is a difference. By drawing from real life you get to practice drawing shade, shadows, lighting, perspective, and much more.
It was when I started to start drawing from real life that I saw a big improvement in my drawing skill. So if you haven’t try it already, pick a real life subject and try drawing it. It’ll probably be kinda bad, but hey, it’ll be a start. And you’re just going to get better and better.
I’ve been obsessively learning how to draw people for years and I want to share what I know with you. Just surf over to my websiteand check out all the FREE lessons that I’ve posted there. You’ll learn things like how to draw nose and much more.
