Face Studies

Faces are one of the things I love to draw. As ever, I prefer to look at the lines rather than just shading etc; it is easy to make things look almost life like with the right shading and depth, but I think it is important to get the character and details of a face across in the lines, as well.

Face shapes and lengths are very important I think, especially to show age. Young people will most likely have a shorter faces as they still have time to grow, and will have a lot more soft edges, too.

Bone structure is also important; do they have high, protruding cheekbones? Low ones? Soft ones that you can see at all? A lot of authorative characters, and ones that stand out much more have cheek bones that really get them noticed. Again, age has to be taken in consideration, with younger people generally having less defined cheekbones and when they are older.

Some face studies with a brush pen. I like the detail and shading I can get with it, as well as the amount of contrast I can get to make certain features stand out.

I still prefer simple lines though, and I think they can be very effective when used right, especially in exploring line strength. I usually have more variation than in the image above, but I think the with the areas of black, the right things that need to stand out do stand out anyway, and it works well.

This image uses a little more variation, but I didn't do as much detail on the clothes which might have been good. Overall I like the image above this one more, but I do like the detail I have got with this image, especially with areas such as the hair.