Wondering how I draw heads?? Want to learn how I draw heads to my characters???! We'll let's start!! :D Here's a few tips, tricks, and steps to draw a head!
One thing to keep in mind, is that the way I draw or think about things and the way you might draw or think about things are probably different. I'm basically a self-taught artist so what I do to sketch things is not necessarily by the books. (Though I did pick up some techniques and hints from various drawing books and artists.) Therefore I will apologize ahead of time if you become completely confused or your drawing (if you're sketching along) doesn't turn out quite like mine. That's the point though--to draw something that's unique to the way you think. The main thing is to have FUN!! XD [Picture examples are beneath the step they're describing.]
Ok, STEP 1: Before I even pick up my pencil I have already formed an image of what I want to draw in my mind. I think this is one of the most important steps simply because without using imagination my drawings would lack the thought that makes them interesting (to me at least ;) and fun to draw. And the more you imagine what you really want to draw, the more details you can add the better! Details, for me, are a big thing and I go a little overboard sometimes. X7
STEP 2: Now that you've got a good idea of what you're going to draw, go ahead and draw a circle. As you can (barely ]:L ) see I made this a very light circle (using a 4h pencil, but you can use any pencil you want as long as you draw lightly). While we're talking about light lines, I think it would be useful if I recommended that you make all the lines light at first. Not only does this help with erasing should you make a mistake, but these are all 'primary' lines--meaning that they are just for the layout and will probably be darkened later.
STEP 3: Like step 2, draw an equally light line vertically down the center of the circle. Or you can put it however you see the face turned as this is the center line in which the nose will lie. As you can see, mine is slightly off center, meaning that his face is turned slightly to our right.
STEP 4: Next draw the jaw and cheeks / sides of face. If your drawing's face is off center as mine is, you will have one more angled side (the jaw) than the other. If not, then your sketch should have both sides smooth arc-like lines for cheeks.
STEP 5: Next, draw a line where you envision the brows to lie.
STEP 6: There are several things going on in this step. One, draw circles were you have the ear(s). If your head is turned like mine is, then you will probably only see one ear. Then draw the hair line. This just where, if your sketch's face had a short haircut, you would see their hair end and the skin on the forehead start. I always do this to make sure I don't put their hair up too high or too low (as I often do :p ). I typically draw three to six little lines to mark the different 'corners' where the character's hair follows. (You may have to look closely to spot where I put this in my drawing as this is kinda hard to see, since the picture is so light. :L Sorry.)
STEP 6: Begin shaping the jaw corner and cheek (This is kinda one of those steps where it doesn't really matter when you do it so long as it's before you darken all the lines.). For this one, think about how you want to draw your character's face. What shape do you want to make it? Since this is a clone, I made his jaw a little sqaurer and his cheekbone (just below where I'm about to put the eye) stand out more. Like I said, it all depends on how you uniquely designed your character. ;)
STEP 7: Continue darkening (slightly, encase you make a mistake) the line along your character's jaw, chin, and cheek(s). Depending on where you imagined the sketch's head turned, you may see the top of the ear or just the side. Since my drawing's face is slightly turned I see the top of the ear a little (that funny little turn of skin, you know) but the parts of the ear closer to me will appear larger, hence why one doesn't see the back of the ear.
STEP 8: Next, draw that little weird triangle of cartilage that's under that little ridge of skin we just drew for the top of the ear. Next draw the nose. What I do to draw a nose is first I start with the bridge of the nose, just between the eyes, right on that center line we drew earlier. Then we follow that line until just past the bottom of that circle we drew to form the tip of the nose. Depending on whether your character is male of female, the nose may be completely different than mine (clones tend to have broader noses ;). Just remember that most noses aren't extremely pointy, there is a certain point where it rounds at the end. Noses are just one of those things that take practice and observation to get the hang of. :)
Draw where you imagine the tops of the brows to lie. Also this depends on whether your character is male of female and how you imagined the shape of their eyebrows to look. Clones tend to have an angled brow that is raised where the bone of the forehead slopes aside to the temple. Like step 6, it doesn't really matter which of these steps go first. However, I like to do the tops of the brows first so I can get a good feel for where the nose should lie.
STEP 9: Next, draw the tops of the eyes. I typically use a straight line that's tapered downwards in varying degrees at the ends for the tops of my characters' eyes. Males tend to have more square eyes where females have more round eyes. The shape of the eyes will also depend on the expression on your character's face. I imagined my clone's face has kind of a serious/focused expression on it so his eyes won't be too terribly wide since his brows are furrowed. Notice I've also connected those little dashes to complete his hairline and darkened around his ear more with the 4h pencil. You can also see that I've added that a slightly slanted line from the back of his head to the edge of the hairline. That's to mark where the line from shorter to longer hair length in his military haircut is.
STEP 10: Then I drew the bottom of his eyes and the pupils. Notice the little circle towards the upper right of each eye? That's the spot I'll leave white when I shade in his eyes. Depending on where you imagined your light-source this spot may be different. At this point I've also erased the 'guide/primary lines'.
STEP 11: Now I've finished in the bottom of his eyebrows. I've also drawn in his lips. Lips were soooo hard for me to draw because I would always make my male character's lips look too feminine. :/ The secret is to draw one half then the other. First I drew the left hand side, curving and shading upwards ever so slightly, before doing the right hand side. The bottom lip is just a little dash, slightly thicker in the middle, a little ways under the dip in the upper lip. Sorry if this part is kinda hard to understand, I should do a lips tutorial to explain this better. X)
STEP 12: Here a perfect example of why it's good to draw lightly first, I messed up his chin. 8C OH NOOOO! Thank God for Mars plastic erasers!!!! As you can see I made his chin/face too long. Luckily it was an easy fix. All I had to do was erase the parts below the bottom of his nose.
From the lines I drew off to the side, you can see the rough estimation one may use to gauge proper placement for the top of the head, brows, eyes, bottom of the nose, mouth, and chin. I'm bad at thinking in things mathematically, being more of a 'if it looks right, then it's good' person, but this might help you see where I went wrong before.
STEP 13: Next, I've added some additional lines to his face such as cheek bones/jaw muscle and that odd little ridge between the temple and the edge of the forehead. These lines are to make the face look a bit more 3 dimensional and do help when one has reached the final shading process.
STEP 14: Now I've drawn in the neck. This is just two lines that taper depending on how your sketch's head is turned. Since mine is kinda sideways, I drew the lines at the corner of the chine and a little past the corner of the jawbone. Cody is sort of a muscular guy so his neck naturally will be a bit more filled out. This is an important thing to consider when drawing your character as the amount of muscle will affect the shape of their face and body. Girls will tend to have thinner necks (unless their a little on the heavy side).
STEP 15: Now I've darkened the most of the lines except some of the expression lines (between his brows and above the upper 'slope' of muscle above his eyebrows), the and the line of his skull on the edge of his forehead. Like I said before, this all depends on the makeup of your character. If they are young and muscular like Cody, then they may have visible muscles like his. Most of the time they do have some muscular lines apparent when there's an expression on their face, but sometimes it's in different places or not as visible. Just something to keep in mind. :)
STEP 16: Ok, here I've shaded in his eye brows and draw in the lines for his neck. For the eyebrows I just used the base shade I wanted them to be as I'll add detail later. With the neck I drew a horizontal line to show the edge of the neck of his bodyglove (that skin tight black fabric the clones wear), and two slanted, vertical lines for his neck muscle. If you look at your own neck, you may see two lines like this on either side of where your adam's apple is. These are muscles that help your head turn from side to side or look up and down. Just put your hand on the side of the neck and move your head, you will feel the muscle tensing and relaxing. I draw these lines to help me remember where this muscle is when I shade his neck later. Like the other muscles you have drawn, the placement and structure of these neck muscles will change depending on what position you draw your character's head to be in. And whether they're male or female.
STEP 17: Now comes one of my favorite parts: the eyes!!! XD I always try to picture eyes as liquid so when I draw them I want the light to move through them. I do this by first shading the uppermost part of the eye along that top line of the eyelid. If you look at your own eye you will probably notice that there is a shadow below your eyelid. This is because the eyelid is blocking some of the light so I'll shade this area heavily. Again, depending on where your light source is and how the head is turned the width of this first shading will change (thicker or thinner).
See how I've done this in the picture below? It's just a set of lines that are very close together/overlapping. I've even done a technique where you shade very lightly first and then shade each layer darker to the eyelid. I guess whatever technique works for you, use it. :)
STEP 18: Here you can see how I erased the (our) right side of his forehead to make this brow not so large and swollen looking. If he was a caveman I might have left it the way it was but since Cody's brow is more angular, I chose to reduce the size of it. ;D Some characters might have cavemen brows so if that's your character then go right ahead and leave it! :) I guess I could liken drawing to pottery: you continue molding your work as you go along. As you can see, I've also shaded in his other eye--following the same light-to-dark as his other eye.
STEP 19: Yay!! Time for my second favorite thing to draw!: hair!!! X) Since Cody has short hair I'm going to draw it by drawing lines that kinda swoop upwards. If his hair was wet, I might draw more horizontal lines to give the effect of his hair being damp and lying more closely to his head. But since it's dry I'm going to stick with these vertical slants. (see arrow) To give the impression of there being individual hairs try to draw the lines with slight spacing and shading variation. When you do this it tends also give the effect of layers and dimension.
Ok, so Cody really has wavy hair but since it's so short we can't really tell that save for the direction it's pointing. If your character has longer hair or curly hair you may want to draw more of a swirling pattern with the direction the lines are pointing. Sorry, that sounds really cryptic. I should really do a how to draw tutorial for each of these features (mouth, nose, hair...). ;P
See how I'm drawing a lighter, more tight set of lines for the shorter hair on the side of his army cut? (arrow is pointing to what I'm talking about)
To add perspective, I put another set of lines around the edge of his head to show where the light is and the curvature of the skull. The second (see second arrow) shade is only a bit lighter and falls directly below the first, darker shade.
By now I've also darkened his eyebrows to the way I want them. This is drawing little vertically slanted lines within where I had already shaded in. This technique gives the eyebrow the appearance of actually being made of hair instead of just a block of shadow or something.
STEP 20: here I've begun to work on that black bodyglove that's on his neck. Since it is smooth and form fitting it must follow the contours of his neck. To imply the smooth texture of the fabric I've drawn the lines close together and relatively the same pressure applied to each stroke so it's more flowing (see arrow). As you can see I've begun to shade in the body glove, following the natural curve of his neck and muscles. To show where I know to draw more lightly to give the effect of light reflecting off the more raised areas of his neck, I've drawn these three light circles as guides (see rightmost arrow). I typically don't draw those circles there but for your sake, so you can kinda see what I'm imagining. :)
Yay! You're finally done! :D ....Unless you wanted to go all out and shade in your character's face. Then again, why not! I tend to use a light pencil and the technique of shading with lines close together, then going over with a blending tortillion for a smoother look. Just keep drawing until it's exactly/close to how you imagined it. :)
Then you may become as insane as me (*insert Joker laugh here* :) and draw nonstop!! X3
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