How to draw Cartoony Faces

1. Introduction: Do you find drawing a little bit challenging? But still, you just love drawing. Well-done. You have come to the right place. Hi, my name is Maria Abramovic and I'm an artist, animator, director, and character designer. Throughout my career, I've had a lot of fun and interesting projects from character design to animation. But what I've come to realize is that whatever you do, there are always four steps and sometimes they just appear too difficult. That's why I created this course. So what are you going to learn here? You're going to learn how to start your drawing process. How to construct different faces from any shape. How to add character to your faces. How to draw symmetry, how to vary your styles of drawing, and how to free your mind. And the more playful. So, join me today in this course and let's have some fun. 2. Basic Shapes: Hi there. Today I'm going to show you how you can design different fun characters by only using shapes. This is a very simple exercise. And the most important here is actually that we are going to have fun. We're not going to construct super advanced phases and you can never do wrong, but let's start just doing it. So I have a pencil that is rather soft here. I have four b, and here I have eight. Be soft. It means that you can easily draw with us, does it Can? You don't have to push too much to make a line, to make a stroke. So let's just start by designing some shapes. So easily just make a triangular shape. You can put several lines like that. And I'm not going to use an eraser here because this is a fun exercise. We need to make mistakes. Let's do a square. Roughly. It doesn't have to be precise. Lead to a sphere. Let's do a round shape just with a loose hand to do these shapes. What else can we do? Let's do an undefined shape or something like that. And around lower part, it, you can't do wrong. Let's do a triangular shape that is upside down. The opposite direction from this one. Let's do another long face undefined. Just try to do it wrong. You know, try to twist whatever shape you do. Just try to play with it. So let's go with this shapes. The next thing we're going to do is we're going to find the middle of those faces. So go ahead and each shape, just draw a middle line. Let's add this one here. It doesn't have to be exactly in the middle. Just play with YOU want the face to be, Let's have this one be here. Let's have this one be a little bit curved. And let's have this one here, this one here, and this one here. This one here, this one here. Like that. Next thing we want to do is we can, we want to find where the eyeline is? So just go ahead and do another line, a perpendicular line to this one like that. And let's have this one here. And this one here, this one over here, this one here, this one here, and this one. Let's say here. The next line we're going to do is we're going to try to find the nose line where the nose is going to be. Now, when we go for the nose, Let's go for the mouth as well. So let's have a one line here and one here. For this one, approximately here. Now, you can decide where this one to be. You can just do this exercise again and just change the nose line here, you will get completely different character. But before you see the final result, just go along and do what I do. And let's have another line, the mouth line here. Let's have this one here, and a mouth line here. Let's have the long nose. Let's hit this line down here and a mouth right over here. And let's have this one. Be like here and the mouth pretty close. Let's have a small nose here and maybe a mouth over here. Let's see what character we gotta get. Let's have his or hers mouth or nose over here and a mouth like here. Let's have another long nose and a small map here. So let's go ahead and draw this phases in the next lecture. 3. Triangular Face: Okay, so now we have approximately the proportions of each face. Let's start discovering. Now this is the exciting, the exciting part when you don't know what you're going to get. I don't know what I'm gonna get. I'm just playing with you here. So let's shave the head of this character and see what we get. Let's round up this corner here, the triangular chin, that's going to be a chin. And obviously it's going to have, the sketch is going to have a small nose. So just around up the nose here. And let's have this one. This line will not be the eyebrow line, but maybe just the eyeline. We can push the eyebrows a little bit higher up. And it looks to me like already like a female character. I'm going to have this character lead me this shape. Lead me to design a nice female character. I'll do a smooth and open eyebrows, like dots, gentle eyebrows. And I'm going to have an almond-shaped eyes to fit this alone, elongated face shape. And just have the I select that. And you'll see that I'm leaving all these help lines along because I want to play here and I want to see what I'm doing because this is an exercise and also a lot of fun. It's a fun exercise. You can play here. You don't have to obey to any rules. And that's how you actually learn drawing when you are playful, when you allow yourself to make mistakes and to have fun. Because drawing as most of all fun. So now we have this little lady here. Let's have her mouth, a little gentle mouth and we will repeat this shapes. She has lipstick here and a small mouth shape, just to round it up like that. And here we have her face. Let's put on some hair following this triangular shape and give her long hair and just suggest her small, long neck to her shape. This is an exaggeration of the shape. That's how you make cartoony faces by exaggerating the phases and just starting from shapes and playing along with that as exercise is the best way to find interesting shapes and to learn how to exaggerate faces. Not to stick to the common shape of a photo realistic, naturalistic face. And give girls the character is all about personality, about pushing its characteristics to create interesting personality. And just doing this exercise, you design a caricature of real faces. And you can see personality. Through that. I'm just going to exaggerate her small face here. It's like thinking about her profession. She's maybe a very strict English teacher. She is very proper. She never does anything on appropriate. Like she never goes out without polishing her shoes or I running her clothes and just this kind of lady. So I'm going to enhance her hair, her hair style to be even when you talk to yourself like that about the characters that you are creating, your brain will get suggestions about more details. To add your character. Have this dialogue in your head about who your characters are while you're drawing them. And you'll come up with more interesting details about them. So if, if she is like an English teacher, maybe she'll have this old-fashioned freckle here. And it gives her even better personality. Something just going to enhance the blackness of her eye line should have justice. Sixties or fifties eyeline. The ladies. Here she is. This is our first character, our shape. Now, let's continue with the next shape. In the next lecture. See you there. 4. Square Face: Hello there. So let's go with the next personality. Now. Not only we can have the next personality, but we can have some dialogue between them or something going on between them. So this lady can give a suggestion what this person here is going to be. And let's have a guy here maybe looking at her. So let's have his nose being more round. So to do a helpline to have around nose, just draw a little ellipse as the top of the nose and enhance the lower part of the ellipse. And let's have his eyebrows. His eyebrows be on top of this line is the eyeline. But this time we want to create something like that. And he's going to have big round nodes. And he has is around eyes. Let's have him have this round eyes and large cheek. Um, he's going to have this mouth like it is looking at how it's like, Well, mom, what are you doing here? Maybe he's a little strict. God is looking at harm. He's not happy. She's done something or she's pointed out that maybe his shoes are not polished. So on maybe his clothes or inappropriate hope would be that guy that would not have his shoes polished and his clothes not being appropriate. Maybe he will have some kind of all. Let's do this lower lip being bigger. And he will have this on shaven face. Mean, this is a guy probably that will unknowing her with her looks. Why not? Let's play with that character and have this big, large, bulky chin. He won't care so much about what she's saying. And you're going to have this square face. So round up the square little bit, but continue the chin over here to make it even better. And you'll have this huge neck and it's like lady, just leave me alone. He'll have this hair that is in disarray. So just put a large chunks of hair on top of him. Maybe a chunk of hair is falling over his face. He's the free guy and he doesn't like to be told what to do. I have this story going on in your head. As I say, that finding personalities is not really only about being able to draw proper faces. It's about character, it's about storytelling. Have this dialogue going on in your head while you're drawing. So you can find what is most important for you. It's characters. Let's have his hair. Just follow the square around the square and fill it up with hair. What else can we have? This guy? We can have some wrinkles. Maybe here is not quite happy with this lady. And he's older so that all the liquid will get with just having some bags around his eyes. And it also enhances his eyes even more. Let's have him look properly towards like that. Shape, his hair dark so you get more contrast in your drawing. When you add this kind of details like dark hair and lighter face, your character becomes more alive. It becomes more graphically appealing to the eye. So this graphic elements to enhance your character. Let's have him have more beer to them. If it's going to be like that, if he's going to be an shave and kind of guy dotted around. So he is this bulky man maybe of Builder. He has different profession. He doesn't have to have polished shoes because they're going to be dirty again, is going to go and build something. But this lady, she doesn't know that. So maybe she's just met him and she points out his looks. We have the Adam's apple here, and this is our second character. You can continue to enhance, gives features later on. But for this, for now, this is enough. And let's continue with the third chapter. 5. Cartoony Face: So let's have another character here that are interacting. And this round face, it looks like a little child. So maybe we will have the islands where we will have just this big eyes like a child. So let's draw spheres and the nose is really small. So we'll just notify, just acknowledged small, small line here and some nostrils and mouth would be cute little mouth, like a baby's mouth and maybe a smile. So around the eyes, we're going to also enhance his cheeks or her chicks. Because children with portrait, children with large eyes, like Disney characters are because children have this small faces and their eyes look huge and bright in proportion with the rest of the face. So when you draw eyes that are larger, face, it makes them, it makes the character look like a Baby, like a child. Just add this pupils and live adult like that. So it's like a light is hitting the eye and the eye will look brighter and shade it around as if it is a sphere here. To make the Eye glow, to make it glossy and look brighter. So you can have these cute character kid here shaping up. You see we started with just nothing, just finding these proportions. And it's such easy strokes. We get so much character and so many different character. Here we will follow this round shape by just designing a very small chick and very small chain and large cheeks. So Dustin, hence, what you already drew from this year. And let it be the babies or the child's chicks. He's watching this couple. Actually, it looks pretty funny what they're talking about because he doesn't or she doesn't care. Let's enhance the upper lids. When you enhance the upper lids of this character, it just makes it even cuter to have eyelashes and to have the upper part being more defined. And then you'll have small eyebrows on top of that. Surprised eyebrows for what these characters are doing. Now, let's have the cute baby hair On top of that. You will. We're going to lift his hair on. Let's make it a little girl with some small pony tails and some chunks of hair around her face and curve out this line of the hair. And the ponytail is easy to do. Just do as symbolic hair chunk. And this part of the hair maybe should be slightly bigger to signify that the head of the child, in comparison to her face, is actually much, much, much larger. And it's even larger than that now that we see. And just say that Slack, you can always adjust and enhance these characters later on when you see that, okay, I'll, I would like to have the hair being a little bit larger because why? Because I want curved face or lower part of the face to look smaller because that's what children has. I'm just add more hair and don't be afraid to a so-called fail. I mean, I don't use that word anymore. I used to. Because you don't want to just draw one drawing, right? You don't want to say, I can't draw and then you draw just this one drawing. Put it on the wall and say, well, I told you I can't draw. You want to become an artist. You want to explore many, many drawings and you want to be able to do it daily, weekly. You want to have that as the job and no one just do just one drawing to as a job. Right. So just please whatever you called, failing, just do that often. Just try to fail every day in drawing and see what happens. But here, we are also having fun and exploring characters that has not, that are not anatomically correct. For fun, for finding, for the purpose of finding character. And this is our third character. So let's continue with the fourth one. 6. Caricature Face: Let's go ahead with the fourth character and let's have him be some cool character. That doesn't care. So let's have the eyebrows. Be alike. Nonchalant, not caring guy. Eyebrows. This way. Sometimes you need to just give them a expressions as well to know who these people are. And let's have them this large nose, these kind of sharp here, nostrils, and maybe even cropped. Why not? Crooks, nose like that? And continue with the a little bit with them. Nostrils doesn't have to be completely symmetrical. And let's have the mouth over here. So he has a lower mouth and he has a very, very small chain. And let's give them a lower lip that is slightly bigger than the upper lid. And here it looks rather funny and give him actually doubled chain because it's just this thing with a large nose and the large along space between the nose and the mouth being down there, it's just kind of like double chin. So let's do that. Let's give him around the eyes. Why not? It doesn't really care. And just with a line on top of that signify the eyelid. Maybe just this is enough for this guy to just be whoever we want him to be. N just have continued in the neck and enhance this other line, the long face. And maybe he also is kind of like unsaved. Say that a little bit to signify shaved skin, just make it a little darker instead of having dots. This is another way to signify here on the skin making it darker. And some neck and maybe some wrinkles on his face. And let's have his hair be a really, really thin hair and his hairstyle have this hair being upwards. He's kind of like a cool guy. Doesn't care what's going on around him. It doesn't care about the dialogue between this kid and this woman and whatever. Let's the character and the shape lead you to wherever you want these characters to be. And let's have some ears here. And maybe another shape from the nostrils to make him a little older like that. And another just junk that's just a part of the ear. And play around with his haircut. Maybe he has also bags under his ears. Or fourth character. Let's go ahead and do the next one. 7. Guy With Moustache: So who is this guy going to be? This one? I'm going to start from the nose. I'm just getting a hint from my subconscious dot start from the nose. Sometimes you need to listen to that. Why not? Because there are no rules here. So just start with a sphere like that and making the nulls really large. And here on the middle of this line, split that and make two nostrils and just do this small curvatures over here for the nostrils. And that's all you need to do. And now I'm going to make his eyes are really close to one another. Because this shape suggests to me that this guy has large head and you have to make the hair looks even larger. You kind of summarize, you kind of put the fit features of the face closer together, bringing them closer so the head would look really, really large. And I'm going to give this guy a huge mustaches. So I'll just make a line here, a line here and connect them. Connect this line width, a little bit curvature over here and a little curvature here. And just connect them. Like doubts and shade in black. Now we have almost the guy done. See, what kind of face do we have here? And have this guy looking straight at us? He's not interacting with other people over there like that. And maybe we'll just make a line for the lower lip. Us define his face as the shape we formed. Define his face. It doesn't have to do it with just one line, just to draw a couple of lines and see what fits best. And I'm going to put this, fame moles, ibex. I like ibex, not on me. Dust on the characters because they make the eyes pop out. They make, they bring them more definition. And I'm going to have this bushy eyebrows on this guy. Higher up. It is determined kinda guy, a bushy bushy eyebrows guy. So let's have his head actually being rather bolt. I'm just going to have this line here and enhance it and have his ears being very small, that the monkeys had a look even bigger. And then I'll just round out this shape. And you see this shape here. I'm just going to round that up as well. So it's not super sharp like this shape. And I'm just going to have him being bald. Hair only over here as bushy eyebrows but no hair. Yeah, you can do that with your characters without being afraid that you will offend someone. It doesn't look like anyone, you would say, well maybe instead it looks like my uncle. Well, don't tell him dots. Just think of a reference that's also good. If you have an uncle that looks like that, why not just take that as a reference and use that for your drawing. An intense the neck a little bit for this character. And bats or fourth character. Now we have three to go. 8. Upside-down Triangle: Okay, so let's do another character. Let's have this one starting with the hair. Why? I don't know why it just felt to me that I want to start with the hair and see what kind of hair cuts this character has. And take it from there. So I'm going to have this gear to have glasses. So I'm going to put just squares instead of the eyes. And another one here. And just dots for the eyes. And here we have the nose. And we have kind of scientists kind of guy away the small eyebrows. And let's enhance his face. Like, Oh God, he just has a triangular face. Continued over here. Maybe a chin here. Small chin. Tuck. Some make shaped like that. And continue the glasses with the ears. And that's it. Or are six character. And let's continue with the next one. 9. Doll Face: Okay, so this one here. What can we do? Let's add the mouth. Let's have that be a female character and have round, nice slips. Junkie lips. So just have a curve on top, curve on the bottom of this line. And those are the lips already. Does have a tiny nose. And let's have large, large almond eyes here. So if you, if you have difficulties to draw that, first, just draft the eyes like ellipsis and Don just you really thick lines, just draw them roughly. Every time you can't draw something, just draw it roughly and then enhance that when you know, when you know what to do. And let's have the eyebrows really high up for this character. And let's enhance now using this help lines in hence her eyes. And she is going to look towards us. So just draw some spheres looking at us and draw again another sphere, thicker. And again, just leave this white dot here just makes the eyes look glossy and more alive and enhance the pupil. And shaded insight. And let's check the other eye. It's good that you can challenge yourself. You can draw a very simple character like that or like that. Now I can draw even more advanced character like this, like this one because this one is more difficult because you have this advanced eyes for you who are a beginner. This is more challenging, but it's good to try different ways because you can have characters with all different shapes and different characteristics. And that can be both easy and difficult, but they're still very interesting characters. Some gamma, add some eyelashes on her. And I'm going to save this lower part of this sphere like her shape, and maybe shade her lips as well to look as if they have lipstick on. Just follow the line that you already drew. Kinds of suggests what you need to watch, you need to do. Let's give her some hair so we'll have chunk of her hair here. Maybe chunk of her hair here. Straight straight hair cuts. And straight hair cut here and continue the hairline over here. And just continue her hair chunk of her hair over here and give her a small neck. Let's say that with the pencil, whatever you have or even if you don't want to shade it, she's if she's blonde, so don't say that with dark, but it gives some more. If you draw only with pencils, it gives us more graphic look. You just show us whether the hair is and how this character look like. So this is just a suggestion. It's never a row. Nothing is really a rule because there's so many different ways to draw and to draw characters. So nothing is really a row, is just a suggestion and a way that someone has done it. You can do it too. But you can also find your own ways of drawing. Whatever you are drawing. You will always find your own style. And first you start with coping style or we're studying what others are doing, and that's what you're doing here. You're following me step-by-step and see what I'm doing. And then this will be something that you will take as a lesson and then yourself. Well, I'll just take what she did and I can do I can do it this way instead, I can do it my own way. Because your brain is finding your own techniques, your own ways of doing things. You don't have to follow anyone else later on. It's just so normal because that's what happened to me as well. I mean, first, I follow up my teachers by the book. I had so many rules I had to follow. And then I decided, well, I don't need to follow these rules. I can design my own rules. So this is our next character. And let's finish up with this strange little potato in the next lecture. 10. Simple Potato Head: Okay, Now this guy or whatever, whoever it is, it has a nose over here. So let's just draw the nose, huge potato, potato hat. And it has a large nose. So let's have him be very, very simple. And as happy mouth. Happy, happy mouth. So we're not going to draw a leap. We go unjust. Draw around dots. You see how different it is than this character that is more advanced. And we're going to give him some mouth like that. Maybe just continue the mouse so we know that this is a mouse. And eyebrows. Eyebrows. Why not? Why not? When you draw, you can do something. And you say, Can I do that? And then you have to answer. Why not? I can do I can do anything I want to do. Let's have is hair being this strange haircuts. Chunky hair on top is a punk kind of guy. Does look like a punk. So let's have him have this big earrings pierced. You see how easy it is when you draw something and you brain suggests. The next thing that you need to do for this character. You don't even have to try. You just have to follow the suggestion that your brain gives you. And you will never, you'll never be wrong. Because the interesting subjects that you draw will be due to create more characters, more stories. Even these characters that you draw can lead you to create stories, to create maybe picture books or anything really you, you bring your mind to come up with because this exercise is endless. So I would like you to go ahead and try your own characters after you've finished this exercise. And just draw some shapes. And go ahead and see what kind of suggestion these characters gives you. Who are these characters? And play around with the shapes and forms. And you'll see how easy it is. So I'm just going to add because it's the last character. So I'm just going to give him some shoulder 74 as a character. He's a punk kind of guy like that. And that took almost no time at all. So I hope you enjoyed this lecture. You'll see how the variety of characters are so different. So I encourage you to do this lecture over again after you followed me in this exercise and create your own shapes and your own characters. And I hope the most important is that you had fun. Because only when you have fun, you can learn how to draw and not if you torture yourself and complain that you can not draw it. Don't do that to yourself. Have a nice day, and I'll see you here again. Phi