March 31, 2022 |

Let’s Face It! Drawing the Face and it’s Features

Drawing faces can be hard! In this 4-part series, artist Kelly Foss will break it down, one feature at a time, and improve students’ ability to bring life to a portrait, using just graphite and red pencil. The first three videos will concentrate on the individual features: the mouth, nose and eyes. Drawing a full portrait in the fourth and final video, Kelly will demonstrate how the features fit together on the face, improving the likeness of a person.

Materials used in this series:

► Strathmore 400 Series Drawing pad, 9"x12"
► Lyra Rembrandt Graphite pencils: 9B, 4B, and HB
► Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor Colored Pencil: Pale Geranium Lake (Any red will do!)
► Lyra Orlow-Techno Non-Toxic Plastic Eraser
► Lyra Kneadable Eraser
► Princeton 2” Hake Brush

Check out the full series below:

Video 1: Mouth
After introducing the materials that will be used in all 4 videos in this series, Kelly will show how to begin a drawing using red pencil. Artists will learn how to achieve realism through traditional techniques such as tilts, point-to-point comparison, mass comparison, and shape finding.

Video 2: Nose
Beginning with a simple “block-in”, in this lesson Kelly will show how important subtleties are to achieve a realistic nose drawing. Building up the values (i.e. shade, darkness) by layering graphite and red pencil.

Video 3: Eyes
Drawing eyes are often the most challenging feature to capture because artists draw “iconically”, and rush to details. In the previous two videos artists have gone through a series of actions to take to achieve favorable results in creating. Now with drawing eyes, it’s important to trust those steps, and have patience in the process.

Video 4: Full Portrait
In this video Kelly will assemble the features on the face. It’s important to develop the drawing holistically. Establishing the position of the eyes, nose and mouth by their relationships to each other, as well as making sure the lighting source on each form agrees.

We hope you enjoyed this short, detailed series on drawing facial features. Now it’s your turn to take what you’ve learned and continue creating your very own portraits!

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