01 Begin with a circle
First, make a small construction drawing. With the help of some basic shapes, the head, eyes, nose and mouth can be positioned with ease.
We start with a circle. Drawing a circle is not the easiest thing in the world. If you don’t succeed right away and your circle looks like a cubist potato, try to fix your wrist and sketch the circle from the rotation of your forearm. You can also – like me – try to approach the circle shape with several quick strokes. Don’t worry if your construction drawing doesn’t look very nice. You won’t see it at all in the end.
02 Center axis
Now we sketch a straight line in the center of the circle. I call it “center axis”, because left and right should be more or less symmetrical, as it is in faces.
03 Vertical guide lines
Time for some guidelines: Cut the circle with a horizontal line. We transfer this half circle height downwards to the extended central axis.
Within the circle, we cut each half in half again with two small lines. This way we have divided the circle into 4 parts and added another half circle height at the bottom.
04 One more circle
Now we need a smaller circle. Don’t worry, we have almost finished construction. The small circle goes from the third line of division to the very bottom. So, it is ¾ as big as the big circle. We also mark the center of the smaller circle.
05 Cheeks
Construction finished. Time to draw the rest. Connect the two circles into a single shape. These joined circles will make up the skull and lower jaw as there are nomer bones sticking out, this should be pretty easy.
You can make the connecting lines straight or curve outwards, depending on how well nourished you want the face to look. The cheeks could also sink inwards if you want a gaunter look.
06 Vertical positioning
How good that we have constructed so bravely. Because now we know exactly where everything should be located:
- At the top quarter line is the hairline.
- The circle-middle line – well, maybe we could have left that out. But experienced artists know: to make a quarter, you have to make a half first
- The next line is for the eyes. Yes, they are really that low. They sit halfway down the face.
- The nose ends exactly at the lower edge of our first circle.
- And the mouth sits at the center of the small circle.
07 Horizontal subdivision
In order not to draw eyes and mouth too wide or too narrow, we subdivide the face once again, this time horizontally. We cut each side in half, then half again. This gives us a keseluruhan of eight equally wide parts.
The left eye extends from the second to the fourth dividing line and the right mirrors it on the other side. The pupils sit in the middle of the eyes at the third subdivision line, exactly in the middle of each half.
The mouth is about as wide as the distance between the pupils. Sketch a pair of eyes, a mouth and a small U-shaped line for the nose. This doesn’t have to be perfect, but be sure to define the corner points clearly.
08 Head shape
Now that we know where the eyes, mouth and nose are located, we can remove some of the guidelines. Keep the one for the hairline, we’ll need it again at the end. Now that we see the face for the first time, we can rework the head shape a bit. A woman’s head shape is softer and less angular than males. Therefore, the outlines of the head shape should be drawn with softer curves.
We start with a U-shaped curve at the chin. Try to draw the chin as symmetrically as possible. The narrower the chin, the more feminine the face will look. But if the chin is too narrow, we might accidentally draw an alien.
When satisfied with the chin, start with a new line at the top of the forehead. First, follow the circle from our sketch. At eye level our head shape makes a barely noticeable dip inward. Once there, elegantly swing around the cheek and draw an almost straight line towards the chin, where our lines meet.
- Mood of our face
Now to decide what state of mind our woman’s face has. This depends primarily on whether the eyebrows and mouth are pointing up or down.I have decided on a satisfied, good-humored face. The mouth points slightly upwards, the eyebrows are relatively neutral.
10 End of the preliminary drawing
Our preliminary drawing is finished. I have indicated the areas for the eyebrows and sketched the lips a bit. But don’t worry, we’ll go into all the details right away.