Creative Drawing: Drawing Faces

David Phan

Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be by Kathryn Temple

The face, and particularly the eyes, can be the most difficult things to draw due to the complexity of every individual’s unique facial features. To help with this difficult task, I’ve used the help of Kathryn Temple’s book Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be to understand the hidden quirks that seem to hide beneath these intricate illustrations. In chapter six of Temple’s book she iterates, “The endless variety of the human face makes it even more amazing that most faces follow some basic rules of proportion and shape” (Temple, 76). Temple goes on explaining the basic rules around the drawing of faces, and focuses on the idea of drawing simple shapes like lines and circles (from my previous blog) to create the complex illustrations that she shows off (Temple, 80).

My attempt at the drawing shows the guidelines of the steps she takes. I took a different approach by drawing the eyes first as I would rather change the face shape than change the eyes if the proportions are wrong. Then I create a rough outline of the head by drawing circles and ovals, making the round head shape. Next, I draw the nose, the mouth, and the ears, crating shadows and textures along the way and smoothing out the edges if the proportions don’t seem right. Finally, I add the hair and the finishing touches to my piece, and changed the curvature of the chin a bit to make the proportions look cleaner.

With the idea of using simple lines and circles to make complex drawings, do you think you could draw something as intricate as a face? And if you were to draw a face, would you draw your own face, someone else’s face, would you create a face based off of your idea of an ideal face shape, or something more creative?

Works Cited

Temple, Kathryn. Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be. Sterling Children's Book, 2014.