Face drawing - how to do draw a face

The basic proportions of the head are demonstrated in the "draw people in a landscape"-lens. Face drawing mostly is about the frontal view of the human face. There two general characteristics of the average human face which are remarkable:

1. The eyes of most human faces are on a line which splits the face more or less exactly in two parts of same size : From eyes to the top of tjhe head and downwards to the tip of the chin. These equal distances are marke with line a in the drawing below on the right side.

2. There are three parts in a face of almost equal proportion marked with line b in the drawing below on the right.
a. the forehead,which strechted from the hairline to the eye brows
b. from the eyebrows to the tip of the nose
c. from the tip of the nose to the tip of the chin


I have used a blue ball pen to trim the drawing on the left to more correct proportions. The forehead was stretched a bit to much and the distance between tip of the nose and the tip of the chin is a bit short. However individual faces can deviate quite a lot from these general rules,which are nevertheless helpful as they can make you aware of the individual look of a face.

Study of the Proportions of a Human Face, Drawing, Royal Library, Windsor Framed Giclee Print

Leonardo da Vinci

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In this face study from a photograph I have used brown for the drawing. Light ocre for the bright side and blue for the shadows.

On the left there is a quick sketch in oil colors on large sheet of kraftliner paper. In this example the volume of the head and face is created by drawing with a brush in different tonalities. I used only three values. The middle tone was given by the paper. The dark values are represented in black and the brightest value with white oil color. This is a fast 10-15 minute study, as reference I used a photograph that shows the sleeping Andy Warhol.
The example in the middle uses line drawing. With lines one can describe the volumes and create different tonalities at the same time with more or less dense lines or hatching in various directions. In the third face on the right I used bundles of lines some of them following the volumes of the face and some in independent direction.

Woman's Face Art Print

Matisse, Henri
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For some time I loved to do quick drawings with acrylic colors from black and white photographs. Here are some examples .. each drawing took about 10 minutes.
Black and white photographs are great because it is easy to study the darks and the lights on a face.

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Hockney, David
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David Hockney has studied the human face through his entire career in various mediums and styles. His very realistic portraits with a camera lucida are very famous, but he has also down great free hand drawings from life.

There is a great gallery of his drawings on the official David Hockney website

I took this link from a great Squidoo lens on Hockney: David Hockney resources for artlovers. There is a lot of great material for example also videos/interviews with Hockney on that lens. I find Hockney so very interesting as he masters very precise drawings and a free or lose style.

This study is a bit more expressive. Again there were mainly only three colors used, umber,blue,ocre and a bit of purple

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In the face on the left I tried to depict the major "planes" in a face with lines, in the middle some quick head drawings and on the right side an ink drawing with combination with pencil

Sometimes I use also a blue ink roller pen in my sketchbooks. The doodles in the middle are some drawing records while watching a video film.