Draw positively awesome faces easily

CREATIVITY. 101: DRAM GIEAT FACES CLAIRE BULMAN WWW.CLAIREBULMAN.COM STORIES FOR A NEW GENERATION DRAW POSITIVELY AWESOME FACES EASILY making happy faces, sad faces, sneaky faces, and enjoy. Faces are key in giving your characters personality. Through the face, you are projecting the state of mind of the character. library of facial expressions that you can refer back to. What can really help you here is a hand held mirror. Make sure the mirror is big enough to show all of your face. Right now, start Notice the positions of the facial features each time your expres- sion changes. You can capture your face on the camera provided on your com- puter. Whichever way you do it, you can use it to create your own expressions. What will help you draw faces better, is to have a ready-made 1. DRAW A ROUND CIRCLE 2. DIVIDE IT BY FOUR 3. DRAW IN THE EYES The eyes go above the horizontal line, a rule is that they should be one eye width apart, but then you can break rules. Use the guidelines to keep the eyes evenly aligned. Don't worry about how round the circle is, as Divide the head in half with the centre line. These lines will guide you where to place the facial features. The verti- cal line is in the middle, but the hori- zontal line depends on where you want the nose to go, so it could be higher up in the circle, or further down. long as it is of a roundish shape. 4. ADD A NOSE, A MOUTH AND EVEN SOME EYEBROWS 5. ADD HAIR AND REMOVE THE GUIDELINES 6. ERASE INITIAL CIRCLE Remove the unwanted lines of the Then add in some hair, going The nose is placed centrally and the top of the nose below the eyes. A general rule for ears is to align them with the top of the eyes and the bottom of the ears usually go below inital circle that you drew, which gave the starting shape to the character. above the outline of the head to give the hair style volume. frightened the bottom of the nose. But our char- acters ears are hidden under her hair. The mouth is generally halfway down the bottom part of the head. Notice the up turned mouth - this girl is happy! Experiment with different joy expressions surprise PLAY WITH THE BASIC SHAPES On character C, I have When you are creating your character, first use the the basic shape of the circle. Or use an oval, curved lines, half circles, and/or circles with dots inside. Dont look at vary- and the shape of the circles. C Also I have played around with the spacing of the features. dropped the ears right down, just for fun. Do this to create stronger Now you can start experimenting with the shapes, characters. With characters C and D, sizes and various ing the shape or size yet. you can see that they are very similar. But you can also see by D changing the shape of the features, you can easily have two different positions. Experiment. Don't just limit yourself to circles. Or you might find your- self going B The result is character A, who looks rather boring, there is little variation. But characters. And by simply raising the eye line, I have made the charac- around in character B is much more exciting. circles! I've varied the size ter look a little older. WWW.CLAIREBULMAN.COM [email protected] © Claire Bulman CREATIVITY. 101: DRAM GIEAT FACES CLAIRE BULMAN WWW.CLAIREBULMAN.COM STORIES FOR A NEW GENERATION DRAW POSITIVELY AWESOME FACES EASILY making happy faces, sad faces, sneaky faces, and enjoy. Faces are key in giving your characters personality. Through the face, you are projecting the state of mind of the character. library of facial expressions that you can refer back to. What can really help you here is a hand held mirror. Make sure the mirror is big enough to show all of your face. Right now, start Notice the positions of the facial features each time your expres- sion changes. You can capture your face on the camera provided on your com- puter. Whichever way you do it, you can use it to create your own expressions. What will help you draw faces better, is to have a ready-made 1. DRAW A ROUND CIRCLE 2. DIVIDE IT BY FOUR 3. DRAW IN THE EYES The eyes go above the horizontal line, a rule is that they should be one eye width apart, but then you can break rules. Use the guidelines to keep the eyes evenly aligned. Don't worry about how round the circle is, as Divide the head in half with the centre line. These lines will guide you where to place the facial features. The verti- cal line is in the middle, but the hori- zontal line depends on where you want the nose to go, so it could be higher up in the circle, or further down. long as it is of a roundish shape. 4. ADD A NOSE, A MOUTH AND EVEN SOME EYEBROWS 5. ADD HAIR AND REMOVE THE GUIDELINES 6. ERASE INITIAL CIRCLE Remove the unwanted lines of the Then add in some hair, going The nose is placed centrally and the top of the nose below the eyes. A general rule for ears is to align them with the top of the eyes and the bottom of the ears usually go below inital circle that you drew, which gave the starting shape to the character. above the outline of the head to give the hair style volume. frightened the bottom of the nose. But our char- acters ears are hidden under her hair. The mouth is generally halfway down the bottom part of the head. Notice the up turned mouth - this girl is happy! Experiment with different joy expressions surprise PLAY WITH THE BASIC SHAPES On character C, I have When you are creating your character, first use the the basic shape of the circle. Or use an oval, curved lines, half circles, and/or circles with dots inside. Dont look at vary- and the shape of the circles. C Also I have played around with the spacing of the features. dropped the ears right down, just for fun. Do this to create stronger Now you can start experimenting with the shapes, characters. With characters C and D, sizes and various ing the shape or size yet. you can see that they are very similar. But you can also see by D changing the shape of the features, you can easily have two different positions. Experiment. Don't just limit yourself to circles. Or you might find your- self going B The result is character A, who looks rather boring, there is little variation. But characters. And by simply raising the eye line, I have made the charac- around in character B is much more exciting. circles! I've varied the size ter look a little older. WWW.CLAIREBULMAN.COM [email protected] © Claire Bulman