I thought I'd give a short lesson for those of your who want to know what I'd suggest. I love to draw (although I don't do it very much) and would like to show you how to draw people.
What you need:
6B, B, and 2H pencil: These pencils are ranging from softest to hardest. The softer the pencil, the darker and easier to smear it is. The harder the pencil, the lighter it is. There are other pencils, but these are the ones I generally use.
Tortillons: If you don't have one, cut out a triangle from a piece of carstalk, and roll it up and tape it to make your own.
White Eraser
Electric Eraser: Yes, as crazy as it sounds, it's really helpful. You don't have to use one if you don't have one, but it seems to effectively fix arias of the drawing.
Drawing Paper: Use regular paper if you don't have any, but drawing paper makes it much easier to smear pencil.
Step 1: Find who you want to draw. It's easiest to draw from a photo. Also, don't draw from memory. You need a photo for it to look realistic. In picking photos, try to find someone where they're looking rihgt towards the camera instead of facing a different angle. That's easiest to do when you're beginning drawing. Today I'm drawing Brittany Hargest, a former member of Jump 5, and now a solo artist
Step 2: Start by drawing the nose in the center of your paper with the 2H pencil. Make a very basic outline. Come out from the nose and make the shape of the eyes and at eye brows. At a light shadow leading down to the mouth, and draw it's outline right under. Remember, make everything very light.
Step 3: Start adding detail. Darken an outline for the eyes with the B pencil, and draw in the inside eyes and pupils. When going around the round section of the eye, use a 6B and smear with the tortillon towards the pupil. Add lashes by either drawing them, or smearing them depending on the way they are represented in the picture. Darken the eye brows a little more, and remember once again to smear. Smear out your nose lines, and add shadow between the top of it and the eyes. Darken with a B wear needed on the nose, and shadow between the nose and mouth. If the mouth is closed focus on the lips, if the mouth is open spend more time on the teeth. You don't want them to look crooked, so draw them in naturally. Don't forget the gums, or shadows left by the teeth. Finally get to the lips, and shade while darkening the corners.
Step 4: If you can notice, I redid the mouth, and moved it up. Redo whatever part of the face you need, whenever you need. Add a little more shading under the mouth, and start with the hair outline. Try to make it flow like in your picture. Add the face line at the bottom, but draw it lightly for when you need to redo. I needed to redo mine at least 8 times since the face shape is one of the hardest parts of the face. You don't want your subject to look too fat or too thin, so try to follow the lines defined by the picture.
Step 5: In this step I redefined the eye brows a little, added her earring and shaded her hair. I loosely outlined the shoulders.
Step 6: Add more shadows to the hair, add color to the shoulder outline, touch up and shade anything you might need, and sign your name. Congratulations! You've now drawn a person! Mine doesn't look exactly like Brittany (this is my first attempt at her) but at least it looks good enough, and after a few more tries it's sure to look even better :)
A few tips:
Practice: It takes some time to perfect your people drawing skills, so do it a lot until you get your best one.
Patience: Drawing people can be time consuming, so make sure you don't rush through the process and take it slow. It's better for it to take an hour and look fantastic, than to rush through it 10 minutes and look just OK.
Position: Even if you draw all the parts of your subject's face right, you have to position them right to. It can make a big difference, so be very careful when deciding how far apart the eyes are, where the nose starts to bridge, where the mouth come in, and how the hair lays.
Hope you all have a great day!
*Brooke*
