11 Preliminary drawing as orientation
Place your preliminary drawing as a separate layer in the background and make it a little lighter so you can still use it as a guide, without it being too distracting.
12 The upper eyelid
The shape of the upper eyelid varies from person to person. Even small differences have a great effect on the appearance of a face. Basically, the upper eyelid (especially the female eyelid) describes a curve that rises relatively sharply and then falls off weakly. The easiest way to achieve this curve is to start from the outside.
13 The lower eyelid and the pupil
The lower eyelid describes a slightly flatter arc than the upper one. It does not start directly at the end point of the upper eyelid. The upper eyelid goes a little further outward. In addition, the lower eyelid can curve slightly upwards on both the outside and inside. In a laughing person, this outer curvature is particularly pronounced because the laugh muscles push the outer edges of the eyes upwards.
Depending on how important this facial characteristic is to us, we can draw this line several times.
Place the pupil so it lies against the upper eyelid. This creates the effect of the eye looking directly at us.
14 Iris and upper lid crease
The upper lid crease is the most romantic crease of the face. Eyelid wrinkles that touch the upper eyelid at certain points create different effects. For example, exaggerated, high eyelid creases create the well-known bedroom look. It is worthwhile to experiment with the upper eyelid crease, as it can express completely different moods.
The standard eyelid crease, when the eye is at rest, runs almost parallel to the upper eyelid. Since things are rarely exactly parallel in nature, the eyelid crease can move slightly away from the eyelid towards the middle of the line and approaches the middle of the face again.
Geometrically, the iris is a circle concentric to the pupil. It is about half as wide as the total daerah of the eye. Of course, we do not draw a complete circle, because the iris is covered by the eyelids at the top and bottom. It may be easier to draw a complete circle for the iris first, and to remove the covered parts after.
15 Eyebrow
For the eyebrow, sketch an daerah which to fill with hair afterwards. This daerah is rather pointed towards the outside. Female eyebrows tend to be a little narrower than those of men and can have a steeper arch. But be careful – this can appear severe.
The hair of the eyebrows starts inside at a 45-degree angle and becomes flatter towards the outside. It’s best to draw the hair with lots of fast strokes. Start on the inside, and draw each hair at a slightly offset angle.
In this digital age, hair that protrudes too much can be easily erased using a pen tablet.
16 One more eye
You can also copy and even mirror things on your tablet. However, there were eyes and faces long before the digital age. And no two eyes ever look exactly the same. And last but not least: You have to practice!
17 Iris Texture
The eye and especially the iris are complex structures, made of many fine shapes and colors. We can approach this view graphically by drawing many fast alternating black and white fine lines from the pupil to the edge of the iris. We can also fill the iris with color later.
18 Reflection
The final touch is given to the eye by light reflection. This can be a simple white point, several points, a window or even a whole landscape. We achieve a pleasant effect with a simple shape that does not cover too much of the eye. We do not want to illuminate the whole eye. Less is more.
19 The mouth
The mouth is not a gently running line. The corners of the mouth, i.e. the outer edges of the line should be defined with a little more pressure or with small corner creases. A typical feature of the female mouth is the small curvature of the mouth crease in the middle.
I made the mouth a bit narrower than in the preliminary drawing, because it seemed more coherent to me.
Don’t forget to always look at your drawing as a whole and check if everything is in its place. Maybe you want to change something? What can be improved?
20 Upper lip
Male and female faces also differ in the thickness and curvature of the lips. We start the upper lip as symmetrically as possible with two slightly ascending, quickly drawn strokes
from the corners of the mouth towards the middle. In the second step, we let the two strokes turn into a V with two steep curves.
21 Lower lip
The lower lip may be slightly thicker than the upper lip, but this is not a must. The line may become slightly flat towards the middle.
The mouth may end up looking a little like a sticker stuck on the face. To prevent this, just use a little drawing trick. Leave a gap between the lower lip line and the corners of the upper lip, let the line gently run out and point towards the corners of the mouth.
22 Nose tip
The nose is known to protrude furthest from the face. This may be a little easier to draw in profile, but in the frontal view it presents us with certain difficulties. As we only have two dimensions at our disposal, we have to work with something called ‘perspective shortening’. This can be a challenge especially for beginners, but we can avoid any problems by applying a simple formula: Draw the tip of the nose as a small horizontal line pointing slightly upwards. On both sides of the tip of the nose we continue with slightly outwardly curved strokes.
23 The nostrils
The nostrils start very close to the outer sides of the nose tip. They are almost horizontal at the lower end and point at the upper end in approximately the direction of the opposite inner eye fold.
Now we should check the face as a whole. Is the nose too large or too small? Too wide? Too narrow? You can change the nose until you are satisfied. Most graphics programs can also help you with the transformation tool.
24 Adjust head shape
Now that we have drawn all the important parts of the face, it is advisable to adjust the head shape one last time. In principle, we can transfer the head shape from the preliminary drawing to the final drawing in pretty much the same way. You may notice some spots that need changing slightly.
25 Two lines
Among many possible shadows and wrinkles that faces could have, I have chosen two that I like to use, especially on female faces.
One is the chin crease under the lower lip. It defines the chin and visually widens the mouth area.
Another is the cheek shadow (on the left). This is one of the typical features of a woman’s face. It usually takes a few tries to get the cheek shadow where it should be, so that the face doesn’t look too bony or grinning.
26 Two boxes
Once again, this step is about determining a position. The ears stretch from the eyes to the tip of the nose. As we see the face from the front, the ears don’t appear round, but almost flat against the head. Draw two small, slightly V-shaped boxes.
27 The ears
One of the great advantages of the female face is that there is usually a lot of hair covering the ears, so we may not even have to draw them. The ear is a rather complicated structure with many angles, wrinkles and shadows and should probably be described in more teliti in a separate course.
I have therefore indicated in the picture how to draw a somewhat abstracted ear in three simple steps. The two boxes help us to do this.
In the next chapter our face will get hair and final touches, including color.