Transcripts
1. Dynamic Heads Introduction: Hey, it's Clayton. In this class,
you're going to be learning about how to draw dynamic heads from a range
of different angles, including the
top-down, Top-down, three-quarter, bottom up, and bottom ups, three-quarter
perspective. We are going to discuss construction when drawing
the head on these angles. And also delve deeper into the ways in which
the proportions of the head shift and
morph according to the perspective that
we are drawing it on. A lot of different things end up happening in terms
of the way in which we visually represent the head when we begin to
turn it in space. And throughout this
series of lessons, what I intend to do
for you is to take away some of the mystery
as to exactly what those things are so that you can feel comfortable and confident drawing the head in these more
difficult representations. Let's get straight into it.
2. Top Down Front View: This will be the top-down
front view of the head. Probably one of the easiest ones that we'll be drawing up today. So we're going to start this
out in pretty much the same way we would start out
the regular front view. This time we're going to be
looking down on top of it. However, we're still
starting out with a sphere. And we're using that
sphere due to determine the positioning and the size
of the head on the page. But keeping it light and
wispy, kind of rough. We've got a very sharp pencil. If you're working digitally, you've got a very
small pencil brush, a pinpoint that you're
working with. Basically. We're going to lay in the axes, running it through the
top and at the bottom. We'll draw in the horizontal
equator guideline. That'll run around the
belly of the sphere. And because we are drawing the head from the
front view here, even though we're looking
down on top of it, we're still going
to want to try to make it as symmetrical on
either side as possible. So these guidelines that we've laid in so far
around the sphere, I mean, there's really only
one of them besides the axes that's determining the direction that the head
is looking in already. Okay, So by step like
number two or three, we figured out what direction the head is going
to be looking in. So use these guidelines to
establish the direction that your head is going to be looking in from the get-go
from the beginning, Laying the center line. Now, it's going to run from the top of the sphere
to the bottom. Then we'll chop off
the sides of it. Now, because we are going to be looking down on top
of the head here. There's gonna be some
foreshortening that occurs. That foreshortening is
going to cause the head to narrow itself
toward the bottom. Given that, as I
cut off the sides, the side planes of my sphere, I'm going to somewhat
describe those side planes to represent and describe that foreshortening That's
going to be happening. Let me show you, because it's going to be much easier to show
you what I mean by that. As I lay in this curve here, where I'm going to flatten
out the side planes. You'll notice that it's
somewhat following the same trajectory as that
angle I just placed in. Okay, so rather than having the side plane division run
straight up and down, the sphere of actually
placed at E in, on an angle here. So that when I flatten it out, it's going to have
that foreshortening, that perspective built into it. The more I'm looking
down on top of the head, the more dramatic that
angle is going to be. It will do the same
thing on this side. Now, what degree of
angle should it be according to the view that
I'm looking at the head on. There's, there's no mathematics that you really need to do for. It's just about using your
eye and your best judgment. And your best judgment
will get more and more accurate and better and
better as you practice. Because what practice does is it helps you to work
out what's going well, what's not going well. So it's as much about getting better as it is ironing out the, the bad aspects of your art
that you're not liking, that isn't leading to the
result that you're looking for. Now one thing that
helps me to capture symmetry sometimes is by looking at the amount of space I've got on this side as
opposed to this side. And so sometimes that's
what I'm judging in order to decide how much I need to cut off of the
sides of my sphere. I've talked about that before, but it's worth just. As a reminder to mention it. Then I'm going to erase away the sides of
my sphere there. And you can see we've
already got, I mean, we've essentially got
a narrowing cranium. Cranium that's smaller toward the bottom than it is the top, which is the effect that
we're looking for here. Without top-down
down representation of the front of the head. Okay, next up we're going to drop the front of the face. Now. It's not just going to be the facial features themselves
that are foreshortened. It's also going to
be the face as well. And so we want to try
to keep that in mind, knowing that the length
from the brow to the chin is in fact
going to be shorter in this view than it would be
in the standard front view. Because of course the chin is getting further away from us. So what I'm going to do
is sit at about here. So that's where the base of
the chin is going to be. Actually, let's sit it
a little bit lower. You'll like it could be lower. And as I lay in the
length of the face, I'm trying to really think about the basic forms
that I'm dealing with. I'm trying to visualize
it on the page, those block formations that
we went over initially. Now because we're looking
at the head from above, the width of the chin
is going to be shorter. Then as we lay in the jaw line, a few interesting changes
that ends up occurring here. The corners of the
jaw are going to raise the bottom
edge of the jaw. It elongates down
toward the chin. Okay. So there's a greater
amount of space in this second edge
below the corners of the jaw that's going
to be applied. Okay, So remember that the
bottom portion of the jaw elongates down towards the chin. The angle is also
going to be pushed. Okay. So it's going to be narrowed. Okay. So the corners of the jaw
are actually going to be narrower in terms of their placement and their width in comparison to one another. As opposed to the bottom-up view where we would see the
opposite effect occur, where they would actually widen. This is what makes
drawing heads on dynamic angles so difficult, is to start with, you've got a fairly complex
organic form already. And then trying to force shorten
and then present that in different angles is it's difficult to get
your head around, no pun intended, but
that's why we try to think about it in the
most simplest terms possible to make it
easier to perceive, to make it easier to think
about and to comprehend. Now these changes might appear on the page
when we apply them. So we've got the jaw line. Big it out there. Remember? Okay, I want to, I want to reiterate this to you. The key changes we're going to see when we're looking down on the head are an extension
of this area here. The edge between the corner
of the jaw and the chin. It's also going to narrow out. And then we're also going to see a smaller distance between
the corners of the jaw. As it tapers further inward. The jaw basically becomes
smaller and pointier. It becomes triangular
rather than square, which it would become if we were looking at it from below. And one way that you can
think about this is if this is the jaw from the front view. Well actually, let's say that this is the jaw
from the front view. Just going to draw
something simple here. Let's say that that's the bottom of the jaw from the front view. Well, as we look down on it, what's going to happen is this extension
is going to occur. Right? And as we
lift the head up, we see the opposite effect. We see a shallowing of
the shape of the jaw. And eventually the head
looks up far enough. We're going to see an inverted
representation of the jaw. Now it's instead
pointing upward. This is the way in
which I think about it. So you can think of
that as the jaw line. Next, we'll go ahead and
we'll divide the distance between the brow and
the chin in half. So we're dividing this
distance in half. Now keep in mind that half here, it's not going to
be there, right? Even though that would actually technically probably be half. But now we need to
foreshortening. Okay, so where would
the halfway point B if we were to apply for
shortening to that distance, well, it'll be sitting
at a little lower. It'd be sitting about here. So that's about where the
noise is going to be. And then we divide
the distance between the noise line and
the chin into thirds. Those thirds aren't going
to be equal though, as they appear to us, they going to be foreshortened. And so the first third will have the greatest
amount of space, while the bottom
two-thirds are going to have an increasingly
smaller amount of space. So again, they skate, they're scaling away from us. They're getting smaller. As we get toward the
bottom of the chin. Next up, we've got the eyes. Now, what we need to remember
is that the eyes are going to sit at the halfway point between
the top of the head, which would be about here, and the bottom of the chin. Where would that be
if we were to apply foreshortening to
that halfway point? Well, I would say
it'd be about here. Be about where the
eyes are going to sit. Lay in a line, a very
light line across there. And we'll just keep
it straight because really the eyes are going
to sit on a flat plane. The front, the front
plane of the face, which is fairly flat actually. Alright, cool. So we've got the eye is
placed in, the brow, is going to sit up here. Actually sitting quite
close to the eyeline. We've already established
where the brow is going to be. I'm just going to draw it in here so it's a little clearer. Then we've also got the
positioning of the ears. Now you'll notice
that they're going to be sitting fairly high up. So they're going to
be around about here, even though they would usually align the bottom of the ear, we usually align
with the nose line. What we wanna do is draw a line up following the curve of
the sphere in order to figure out where those ear position positions
are going to reside. So always remember that is, they sit higher on the head when we're
looking at it from above. The higher we are, the higher the ears are
going to be on the head. Wonderful. Next up, let's lay in
those head planes. I like laying in the head
planes because they give us a basic three-dimensional look at what the geometry of
the head consists of. Quickly lay those in. Now we've got, we've got a basic head structure
ready to roll. Laying the hairline here is going to run from the
top of our flattened out side planes into the middle of the cranium. And you can see that
we've actually be pulled down following
the curve of the sphere. So we've got a fairly well-structured foreshortened
head happening here. Now we might go and
tweak the shape just a bit to fine tune it to make sure it's the
way that we want it to be. It's the way that
we wanted to look. And we can just go over the
top of the darker line. Remember, always keep
your initial lines very, very light so that
you can do that. So you can just go
over the top later on, unfixed things up if needed, or polish and refine what
you've already got there. Okay, so that's
looking pretty good. Finally, I'll I'll
add in the neck. And we'll just keep the
neck very simple here. Doesn't have to be
anything fancy. The trapezius muscles
on either side of the neck. Wonderful. So that is the
basic construction of the top-down
view of the head. Next up, let's lay in
the facial features. Move this down a little bit. Actually. We could even
make it a bit bigger. There we go. Okay, so facial features, but start with the eyes. Going to loosely draw
these in to begin with. Now, the eyes, in terms of
their most simplest shape, you can think of
them as like this from the top down front view. Angry. It's basically an angry I and k. So you're going to have this flattened out
portion along the top. And then you're going to have the bottom of the eye running along the bottom open. The bottom edge is
the opening like so. That's what I'm thinking about
as I'm drawing in these IS here on a very
simple level anyway. So again, we've
got the top here. We've got the opening of the eye and going to run right
back up into the top here. And the reason for that is
because this bottom eyelid, which we can see
a quite a lot of is wrapping around the
eyeball shape itself. Same on the opposite side. Rather than using a curved line to describe the
shape of the eye. Try to keep them shape and
sorry, sharpened energetic. So I'm gonna do that on
both sides. Actually. I kept this one a
little bit too curved. Curved lines tend to come
out a little bit more meek. And you don't want
make your drawings. You want them nice
and energetic. Nice and sharp and vivid. Got the I is there. Let's roughly sketching
the eyelashes. The basic shape for
those eyelashes. But a set running around
the sides of the eye. A set running along
the bottom and a set running along the top as well. Alright. We'll do the same thing on
the opposite side here. Keep in mind the size, the
size of the eyes as well. Roughly speaking, the
width of the head overall should be bad
hot five widths apart. The distance between HIS
should be one eye width. Minor, probably sitting a
little too far apart here. Actually, I'm just going to cheat here and
I'm going to move them over just a tiny bit. Sometimes, you know, eyes, they can just be
a little bit off. You're doing this traditionally, of course, erase it and do
it again if you need to. Yeah, that's sometimes a
problem I end up with. Everyone has their
own repetitive issues that crop up within their drawings that
you usually need to be addressed or at least
need to keep an eye on them. All right, Next, we will
allay in the eyebrows. And as I said before, they're going to be sitting
right on top of the eye here. We'll draw in our
basic eyebrow shape. As I've said before, if you have trouble drawing
the eyebrow shape, practice that for like a day. And I can tell you
you're not gonna have any problems with the
eyebrow shape after that. I mean, just focus on
drawing the eyebrow shape. It's about tackling it
one component at a time. And you might not be
a pro at drawing. I'm drawing the entire head, but you'll certainly be
approached drawing eyebrows. If you're focused
on it for awhile. Eventually, you pull it all together and before you know it, you're capable of drawing
the entire head with ease. I wouldn't ever say that they're drawing
the head is easy. It's always going to
have its challenges, but it would get easier
with time and practice. We'll draw an hour eyebrow. There's rendering them out. Mixing up the distance and the space which
those eyebrow hairs are placed to give them
a nice organic look. And then we'll lay in
the iris and pupil. So people in IRAs are going to be sitting
closer to the eye. Here are the top of the
eye, especially if they're, if we're looking down on it from above and that head
is looking at us. Okay. So the pupil is
going to be sitting directly underneath
that top eyelid. Would draw in a little bit
of a reflection happening. I'm gonna do is the
same thing in the opposite high,
sitting the pupil. And also iris right up against the bottom
of that top eyelid. Alright. Next up, we'll
draw in the nose. Now we're not going to place
in the entire bridges and those are only going to suggest that a little
bit at the top there. We might even add in
some subtle folds, some subtle creases around
the middle of the brown, just to describe some of the muscles that are
within that area. But let's lay in the nose now. We know that the nose is
basically like a block. We were looking at it
directly from the front. It looks something like this. Okay. But then when we're
looking above it, what ends up happening is that we don't see this
underside plane anymore. Instead, what we end up seeing represented
with the blockier is an inverted representation that hides that underside plane. So in a sense, you could think
of the underside, nose plane as the underside and jaw plane because
the same effects essentially end up happening. Alright, and so what
does that mean? Well, if your nose is
going to be placed here, it means that It's going
to extend beyond it. So it's going to pull down
further toward the mouth. Of course, I want
to be careful here. We don't want to pull
it down too far. Otherwise, it'll make
it look as though a character's nose is much
longer than it should be. I'm only going to pull it down a little bit and I'm going to keep the shape fairly simple
to begin with at least. And that's, that's
all you really need. Just something that
looks like that. We'll go around the
lightly drawn in basic shape that we place down
to define its positioning. And tweak it, refine it, make it look more like a nose. Indicate the top of the nostrils there if we want to as well. And that's about it. Okay. So now it looks like looking
down on top of the noise. Again, you can indicate the
nose bridge if you want to. It's a stylistic choice. I like to keep it fairly light and not completely defined. Once again, try to get your nose centered in the
middle of the face. Mine probably isn't all that
centered. Being honest. Right? Next up we've got the mouth now. Once again, because we're
looking down on the mouth here, rather than it being straight across from
one side to the other, There's going to be a
downward bend in it. Okay. So with that in mind, I'll go ahead here and start with the
middle of the mouth. Pulled out the opening. Up toward the corners,
which will sit up here. Now remember that the
width of the mouth is going to be positioned, or the corners of the mouth
will be positioned in the middle of the
eyes on either side. So what we need to keep in
mind here is that not only does the positioning on the vertical axis of the facial features shift
according to the perspective, but also their
width is affected. Okay, so if we take
the middle of the eye here and we apply it in perspective as we bring that width down the
corners of the mouth. Well, they're going to
sit a little more inward. So the mouth will actually
be narrower than it would otherwise appear if we were looking at the head
directly from the front. So again, another important
thing to keep in mind, they're laying the top lip here if we're able
to see it at all. Because that the top
plane of the lip is going to be hidden
more on this position. Then we've got the
bottom lip here. We can see more of it though. We'll define its outline
ever so slightly. And I'll darken up the
outline to define it further. The corners of the
mouth, of course, which we can bring down
just a bit like so. And then we've also got a
little bit of rendering that's going to happen
underneath the mouth. That bottom, underside plane that leads into the chin,
the top of the chin. And that just about does our main facial features that sit on the front
plane of the head. Next up, we have got the ears. We're going to be
looking more on top of the ears, of course, since we're observing
the head from above. I'll start with the
outline of the ear. And then I'll draw in the inner frame of
the ear, the top. And I'm going to try to
present it as though it's really curling in
there to the ear. Alright, We'll leave that
down to the ear opening. Placing the ear Hall. And I'm even going
to I'm going to pull this inner cartilage
out just a little bit further to describe the
anatomy there correctly. The little indentation
in there at the top. Wonderful. We'll do the same thing on the
opposite side of the head. Outlining the shape
of the ear first. Boring in the inner frame. Pulling out the inner cartilage. Leading that down
into the ear lobe. Then completing the
opening to cover the hall, thus completing the ear anatomy. Now what I'll do, since our facial features are
pretty much sorted, is I'm going to go back
around the outside of the face and define the jaw
to set a little bit more. Really tried to perfect
its shape a bit. And all that requires is just darkening up the outline over the top of that lighter draft roaring that we
started out with. I'll go back around the
top of the head here. I'll erase these off cuts. Tightening the drawing
up just a bit. Then we'll round out the top. All right, find that even
for professional artists, it's actually tough to get this rounded bit at
the top of the skull. To be completely symmetrical. Not everybody has an
easy time doing it. It takes a bit of tweaking, little bit of sketching
in order to get it right. So just take your time to
capture a nice shape for it. I think that's a
lot of the time. What this is, especially
in the beginning is just taking the time to get it right, even though it is seemingly
insignificant aspects of roaring the head. Okay, cool. And now let's define
the neck a bit more and we can call
this head example done. We'll keep the next simple. It doesn't need a whole lot of anatomy defined in it today. It's not the main focus. What we can also add in
is maybe a little bit of indication of anatomy
around the eye socket area. I guess, the
sidewalls of the nose which kind of join
onto the eye sockets. Usually I'll just indicate
that with a line, maybe a doubled up line, it doesn't need a whole lot. We can also placed in a line for the fold of the bottom
eyelid against the eye socket. And that just about does it. There we have it going to erase these
guidelines here ends. That's the front top down
view of the head completed.
3. Top Down Three Quarter View: Okay, So this is
where things are gonna get really tricky, because now we're turning their head on more
than one axis. Not only are we turning
it up and down, we're also turning
it side to side. But nonetheless,
I'll start out very simple with the sphere. Lightly drawing it in. I'm going to try to make
it a sphere which is roughly the same size as the
sphere of the previous head. So again, the sphere is
always going to help you to figure out what size
the head should be. The easiest way of establishing the size of your head
from the get-go. And then we have got the axes. Now, this is quite a
dynamic view of the head, a common dynamic view in fact, so that axis is going to
become quite important. What I was doing a bottom-up, you just then when what I
want is a top-down view. So I'll put the axis
through the top here. The head will be
on a slight tilt. Poke it out the bottom like
an olive wanted to speak. Then we'll lay in that
horizontal equator line. They'll run around the sphere. And I am drawing this
in very, very lightly. Hopefully you can see it. But the reason as to why I'm
keeping it light as always, is to allow myself the room to make all those
all important tweaks later. Because I know that
they're going to come up. I know that it's rarely ever smooth sailing or become
accustomed to that. The trauma of drawing
has made me used to accepting the fact
that it's just not going to be perfect, that there's always going to
be things that need to be fixed and tweaked even
at this early stage. As I'm, as I'm fixing up the the horizontal
guideline here, you can see me tweak that. I'm pulling out the eraser a
little bit here and there. I'm sketching it, sculpting it, trying to get it the way
that I want it to be. And you can noodle
away at that stuff or much longer than
needed a lot of the time. In fact, this is a very
neat foundational drawing that I'm laying
there on the head. Usually I would keep it much
much rougher than this. Why? Because I know that it
doesn't matter how it is. All that matters is that
final presentation. Okay. So where do I want the
head to be looking in? Well, I want it to be
looking in this direction. So you know what I'm
going to start with? I'm going to start with
a little cross that intersects the vertical line, that intersects this
horizontal guideline. And then I'm going to pull that up around the
rest of the sphere. So that's, that's an
easy way of just nailing exactly what direction you
want the head to be looking in and where the center
line for the face will be. As a result. You'll notice
that these guidelines, they follow the curve of the
sphere as we draw them out. That's what in fact
describes the sphere is a sphere instead of a flat
two-dimensional circle. Next, I'll chop off
the side planes. I'm keeping in mind how much
space is on this far side of the head as opposed to the side of the head that's
closest to us. In order to figure out
how far toward the front, that side place should come. That side plane
should come rather. I'm getting a drawn in there. You'll notice that
side plane is squashed somewhat due to the foreshortening
that's applied to weight. Everything has foreshortening
applied to it. Next I'm going to draw a center
line for the side plane. And that center line
will travel on an angle. Also lay in the
front of the face, which is going to run all
the way down to the chin. And it's important that I fully
the axes that I initially established the head in order to make sure I've
got the trajectory of the face laid incorrectly. So that's going to
run down to the chin. And I know because I'm looking
down onto the head that The length of the face is
going to be shorter than it otherwise would be if I was
looking at it on an IR level. Now the jaw line now
this is the tricky part. We're going to again taper that. In other words, we're
pushing its angle, we're making it more triangular
in an otherwise would be as it's pinched toward
the bottom of the face. And remember that the bottom
of the jaw is elongated. So this edge I'm
drawing in right now, it's going to appear longer. The k n on the opposite
side of the face. I'm just going to
loosely draw that in in a straight line that runs from the side of the sphere all
the way down to the chin. And we'll talk about
how we shape that out in more detail
in just a moment. Be mindful of the
angle of the jaw here, it might require some tweaking
in order to get it right. Develop an artistic
IF of this stuff. A critical eye probably
is more accurate. That allows you to
be able to see and judge whether or not
the angle of the jaw, for example, is correct. It may not be. You may need to push it, pull it, squash it, stretch it in different ways in order to get
it to look right. I'm going to draw a little
cross over the top of the head just to mark where that is. Now it's time to plot out
where the facial features are going to sit along
the length of the face. I remember just as before. We're going to figure out the midway point between
the brow line and the chin. And that's going to be,
and wherever that is, there'll be where
we place our nose. So between this point
and this point, where would the midway point B with foreshortening
applied to it? I'm going to estimate that
it it'd be about here. Okay. So there's a greater
amount of space in the top half than there is in
the bottom half, of course. But that's only because
of foreshortening if we were looking at an
eye on an eye level, that positioning for the
nose would be sitting exactly halfway between the
brow line and the chin. Alright, let's divide
the bottom distance. The noise and the
chin into thirds. Top third is going to have
the most amount of space. To bottom thirds
are going to have an increasingly smaller
amount of space. There to be where
the mouth sits in the top of the chin will be. Next. We need to place it now. Eyeline. Eyeline is going to sit just underneath
the brown line. It's gonna be very,
very close to it. And it'll sort of run around
the front of the face, following the curve of the
sphere just a tiny bit, but it will mostly be straight. Sometimes you've
got to straighten up the eyebrows as well. And you'll also notice that
the top of the head here, it looks kinda to round. And the skull isn't a
perfect spherical dome. It's actually flattened
out on top a little bit. If you look at an actual skull, especially from the side, you'll see that it's
flattened out on top. So what I like to do, as I like to grab my pencil here and flatten out
the top of it like so. And I guess that's what
would happen if I actually decided to chop off the other side of it
like I was supposed to. But you flatten it out on top and will sculpt that out
further and further. But for now it's
worth just noting that you don't always need to leave it and you shouldn't
always leave it as a perfect spherical curve
on top of the skull. You want to shape it to something that resembles a more of an accurate, realistic skull. Okay, great. And keep
in mind of course, that most of the time your
characters are going to have some kinda cool hairdos
sitting on top of their head. Will definitely talk
about in a later lesson. But just in terms of knowing what's going
on underneath all that, he'd been mined the skull shape. Okay, Wonderful. Now let's place in the
facial features themselves. Now that we know where they're positioning is going to be. I'll also draw in the
years. Before we do that. I guess the years are
a facial feature. So we'll start with those. Now raised up. And I've simply followed the
positioning of the nose in a curved fashion up into
the bottom of the ear, which aligns with it. And the top of the
year, of course, aligns with the
top of the brown. Follow that curve. It's not going to be down here. Curve upward around
the side of the head. Okay, Wonderful. Now let's draw in the eyes. Okay, So from this
point of view, what is the basic
shape of the eye? Well, it's essentially
something that looks like this. And if you want to get more
complicated than that, I'll lay in the front of the eye or the inner
corner of the eye. I'll lay in the top and then
I'll lay in the bottom. Bottom edge is going to
come all the way up at the tear duct and then drop all the way down in the middle. They come back up and
create the outer edge of the eye or meet the outer
edge of the IRS and say, okay, so that's the basic shape, at least on the side of the
face that's closest to us. On the side of the
face is further away. The I is going to well, it's going to follow
a similar shape. It'll just look a
little bit different. Okay, so let's, it's
very, very basic form. Think of it as like a triangle. On a more complex level. It looks a little
bit more like this. You're going to see the brow
layered on top of it closer. Little bit more
on that far side. Okay. Probably give those
facial planes drawn in verse before I start to lay
in the facial features. Now, the other thing that I'll mention here before we
get into the facial features, actually skipping ahead here
a little bit with the eyes, but I just wanted to
talk for a moment about the far side of the
face in how we describe that. Because it can be difficult, especially in this more
three-quarter view. There's 23 things that
I like to keep in mind. That is, let me get
my red pen out here. That is the cheekbone. Okay. Now, if I, if I take my
head plane down here, this cheekbone is going to drop down just a little bit
in the final artwork. So we've got the cheekbone
and then we've got the mouth muscle that
sits around this area. Then we've got the chin. Okay, so it's this form here and this form that
joins together which creates this cape on the side, the far side of the face
as it turns away from us. Sometimes we'll see
the side of the jaw, the opposite side of the
jaw peeking out there? Sometimes we won't.
It depends on how far the head is
turned away from us, but that's something
to keep in mind. Hopefully, that clears up some
of the confusion as well. So again, I'll draw it up here. We've got the brow, we've got
the top of the cheekbone. The bottom of the cheekbone, which leads into
the mouth muscle, which will then
lead into the chin. Sometimes you will see
the opposite side of the jaw peeking through there. Sometimes there'll be
completely obscured. But that's what
I'm thinking about when it comes to drawing in the far side of the face accurately in
a three-quarter view, whether it'd be the
three-quarter view, looking down on all the
three-quarter view, looking up at it. Going to go ahead here,
enjoying my hairline as well. Okay, Cool. Facial features. Let's get those late in there. We've got the eye, which
I'm going to roughly draw in on either side. Okay, there we go. We'll draw in the
eyebrows on top of that. On either side of the head. Going for that simplified
eyebrow shape to begin with. I'm not quite happy with
how the eyes are looking, actually some just going
to tweak them someone. Every angle of the head can have its own set
of difficulties. Okay. I think there might
be looking a bit better. Now I'll attend to this side. There we go. Next, we're
placing the eyelashes. Now you're going to
see the bottom set of eyelashes just a little bit more than you
will see the top set. Because you can think of
the eyelashes as planes. Essentially, that top
plane is just going to always be hidden more when we're looking at
the head from above, just like the top lip. And there we go. Again, I'm still not liking
the way that eye is looking, so I'm just gonna get
rid of it completely. Sometimes if something's
not working, you just got to restart
it from the beginning. I think the reason it wasn't working is because I
wasn't quite getting that angle right at
the top of the eye. Okay. I think I
like that better. So a lay back in
those eyelashes. The bottom of the eye
and around the top. And a lot of what
makes the face work from these different angles is really nailing the shape of the facial features and the
shape of the face itself. It's all about shape. That's looking way better. I'll outline the brow. Get a good shape going for it. And do that on both sides. Then start laying in
the brown texture. Keeping those brows
strands are very distance apart from one another. And thinking about the comb
of the eyebrows as well. So what direction is
that here traveling in? What direction do I want
it to be traveling in? Keep in mind, these eyebrows
aren't realistic in any way, but they look good
stylistically. They work stylistically. It's not about what
capturing, what's accurate. It's about the
design of your art, especially in comic
book illustration. How will you design
the facial features and facial shape of
your characters? What will make them unique and interesting, uniquely yours? I guess that's what
they call style, is the way you
design those things. Next up, we'll place in
the iris and the pupil. And now the nose. The nose is an interesting one. Remember that the nerves, it protrudes off of
the face like a block. So if we were to draw
it in roughly here, that's kinda the idea
that we go on with. So this would be about where the base of the nose would go. So I'm going to draw a
little line out like so. And then I'll start
drawing out the bridge of the nose from the brow, pulling it down
and then back in. So it's important to describe the three-dimensional
representation of the nose properly, especially in views like this. I'm not sure the angle of
the nose was quiet, correct? This I'm going to have
another go at it. Again, these trickier angles are going to have more
errors in them. Inevitably. Even the best artists are going to have to
rejig their heads from time to time when drawing them from these more
difficult angles. So if you've gotta do it as
well, that's totally okay. You can see I'm making plenty
of tweaks and plenty of fixes to the head that I'm
drawing here especially. And some days I can draw
it better than others. Most times I don't have
a problem with it. But then you get that
odd day where you just one reason or another, it's not quite coming out
the way that you want it to follow the structure. And then along the way
you're following the path. Does it gonna be obstacles
every now and then? You'll just need to
do what you need to do in order to get past them, in order to conquer them. Hey, that's looking
a bit better. Sculpting out this nose
shape I want to give, I like to give my characters nice-looking facial features
that look accurate, as accurate as I can get them. I think this is looking okay. So now what I'll do is
placed down the mouth, starting with the
middle of the mouth, drawing out the opening from
the middle into the corners. And remember that they're going to align with the middle
point of the eye. We've got those drawn in. Then we'll draw in
the bottom lip, place in a little bit of
rendering underneath it. And you'll notice
that this doesn't leave much room for the chin. So I'm going to extend that
down just a bit more as well. So I'll probably take the
chin down to about here. In fact, once more, it deviates from the
initial foundation that we laid down
in the beginning. But so be it. That's
totally fine. I'm not going to stick
to the foundations if it's not going to lead me to the best possible
final presentation. Okay, so next up, let's talk about how
we're going to define the far side of the face and the shape that it needs
to be presented as. Alright, I'm going to
take the eyebrow here. I'm going to pull it
in towards the eye. And then we're going to
drop this cheek bone down and horse were protruding out beyond that initial
foundation we laid him before. That's because that initial
foundation doesn't take into account the complexities
of the sub anatomy. Okay, so we've got
those general forms, but then we've got
the sub forms on top. So we're going to take
out that cheekbone and we're also keeping in mind the angle and the tilt of the
head as we're observing it. So actually that cheekbone is probably going to
drop just straight down. Okay. So we'll pull it in
toward the mouth muzzle. In fact, his cheek
is looking just a little bit too upset. So I'm going to make the transition
softer, more seamless. Now got the mouth muzzle, which I'm going to lead
down into the chin. And then when you've
got when dropping down below it on small, we'll refine the face around the bottom of
the chin a little bit more over the top of that outer outline
and polish it up. We'll define the outline of the bottom lip with just
some little lines there. Just to suggest the
outline of the bottom lip. And I'm going to widen the
chin some more ever so slightly because I
feel like it needs it. Looking too pointy
at this point. Once I lacked the width
that I've gone with, the new width, I'm
going to go over the top of it again
and polish it up. You can see I'm making these
ever so slight tweaks, getting it closer, closer
to what I wanted to be. So always remember that drawing
is a sculpting process. Especially in the
penciling stage, where you're really
trying to get things down before
you enter the inking. Important to get it right. Next, we'll place in the ears running a darker outline around its shape to
make it more vivid, to make it more refined. Then we'll start drawing
in the interior anatomy. Beginning with the interframe. Having that transition into the cartilage that resides
within the ear cup. As always, I'm going
to try to make sure that Y shaped
piece of cartilage on the inside of the ear is
protruding out a bit. What makes the ear
complicated to draw these angles is that it's
anatomy is also foreshortened, gifted, and presented in
these angles as well. It's already got some
very complex anatomy and now all of that anatomy needs to be drawn in a different way from
a different angle. So that's confusing
for most people. That's difficult to pull off. Give it your best shot, and try to really
understand the ear in as a very simple representation
of what it should be. So simplify that anatomy. Break it down into a very basic three-dimensional
model inside your head, and try to use that as a guide. Then we've got the jaw line, which we're going
to refine the shape of leading it from the
corners down to the chin. And then we're going to start to sculpt out the skull
itself around the top, the dome piece, bringing
it in at the back. In fact, we could even probably
cut a little more away there. Bring it in tighter. You pick up your
own visual cues. You see it's all about opening your reticular
activation system. It's a big fancy word, but what it really is is just what you're paying attention
to at any 1 in time. You're taking in a
lot of information. But what are you actually
paying attention to? For example, I'm sure
that you couldn't tell me how many green items are sitting in your
room right now? I couldn't tell you how many green items are
sitting in my room, but I can probably see
them in my peripherals. I probably know
that they're there. I probably couldn't I probably couldn't even tell
you what color socks I have on right now. So it's really interesting,
even though we, we should be aware of those
things and we should be able to record them, recall them. That's not necessarily the case. And so when it comes to drawing, we want to try to develop, articulate activation to hone in on the areas that we need
to be paying attention to. And for me, that was
the jaw line today. It was getting
those shapes right. And really paying
attention to that stuff. Because there's
so many things we miss when it comes to drawing. What separates an image from a pro is someone who
is actually able to catch those mistakes
in the first place to who's able to see where
they're going wrong. And developing the tools
to be able to fix said Things is a whole
different ball game. But if you can't see
them in the first place, that's when you're
really in a bad place. That's when you're really
going to have some trouble. Okay, there we go. So now I'm going to just move
these AI examples off to the side so that we
can draw in the neck. This is going to drop
down from behind the ear. Find that muscle a little
bit that runs down from behind the ears into the
center of the collarbone. The trapezius muscles as well. Which in this case I'm going
to run up into the face. So the heads actually securing
part of the neck there. But that just about does
it for our top-down, a three-quarter view
of the human head, a little bit of a trickier one, but still achievable
nonetheless, if we really set our mind to it.
4. Bottom Up Front View: Okay, so to draw the bottom-up
front view of the head, we're going to start out with
a sphere. Just as before. It's all the same process, no matter what view
you're drawing a head on. So if there's one
thing you're going to get really good at,
it's drawing spheres. Now I can honestly tell you
the more you do this that just the more and more
comfortable It's going to feel, it's actually going to
be fun at some point. Trust me, it's going to be fun, I promise you, will AND axes. And that's just
going to go straight through the top and the bottom since we're looking directly
at the front of the head, except in an upward tilt. Draw the horizontal guideline around the belly of the sphere. And this time you'll notice that that guideline is
curving upward. So that's a good general
rule to keep in mind, is if you're looking
up at the head, then the horizontal guideline will be curving away from you. It'll be curving upward. In fact, no matter what direction
the head is looking in, the guidelines should
be curving away from you in that direction. Then we'll draw in
the center line. And this time we're going to see the opposite foreshortening
effect happen. Everything's going
to get smaller and more compressed toward
the top of the head. So why was to lay in some
very rough guidelines here? We would see that as we chop off the sides of our cranium, those side planes are going
to follow the same angle. So that's how, that's how, I guess you could
think of it as. Third of perspective. That is being applied
to the head right now in this more dynamic view. And believe it or
not, this is really, really difficult to pull off. So if you are able to even make an attempt at it,
That's incredible. Most portrait
artists are really, really good at drawing the head from the standard
points of view, but you ask them to draw more dynamic representation
and they cannot. Okay, So this really is some magical ability that
you're cultivating here. You'll be a wizard. Once you learn how
to do it properly. So I'll just erase away the
sides of the head there. And what we're left with
is of course the cranium. Now there is still
going to be somewhat of an inward angle applied as
a drawer in just a moment. As I'll show you,
it just won't be as angled inward as
it normally would be. So where's the chin
going to sit here? Well, this is something you can estimate as we have done
the previous angles, I might place mine about here. But you could also take this bottom node
and this top third, and you could measure out
at another third in order to find where it
should be placed. After a while, you'll be
able to just place it down somewhere and that
looks right and it probably will be
fairly accurate. Okay. So let's lay in the jaw line and the
jaw line is probably the trickiest component to this particular angle that
we're looking at the head on. And this because
now it's widened. So normally the jaw
would be like this. This would be the
general shape of it if we were looking at
the head from the front. But now that we're looking
at it from below, well, this line is going to widen, this one and so will this one. And the chin is going to lift to adapt the entire shape is
just completely morphed. Or drawing the sides of our jaw, which are going to
drop down this time. So we get the opposite effect of the previous two examples where we were
looking at the top, at the head from the top. And instead now the sides of the jaw above the corners
are going to be elongated. Whereas the point that while the edge joining the
corners of the Georgia, the chin are actually
going to be shortened, but they'll also be
flattened out here. So we'll get an inverted look, slightly inverted
look at the jaw. What I'm placing in now are just the the drawer thickness. It think of it as the jaw line. Because actually
you've got basically, I guess you could say a
horseshoe shape for the jaw bone itself and a little
bit of muscles sitting on the interior
of that horseshoe shape. Okay, so again, this
is really tricky. But the best way that I have found to think
about this is, as I said, you've got the horseshoe, which would look
a bit like this, let's say, for example,
from the front view. And then when we're
looking down on it, we can see more of the curve
of that horseshoe, right? So it extends. And then when we're looking
at the head from below, looking up at it,
the horse shoe. It ends up inverting
at some point. And we can see the bottom of
the jaw instead of the top. So think about it in that way. And if it doesn't look right, it may mean that you simply
need to lower the chin a bit or you need
to raise it more. Regardless, this is
a weird perspective to view the head on it even in real life
because we're not used to seeing it from below. Alright, so now that we've
got the jaw line figured out, we need to establish where
the nose is going to sit. And it's still going to sit in the middle of
the brow and the chin. But it's going to be foreshortened in the opposite
direction this time. So it'll actually sit a little higher than those positioning will probably be about here. In fact, the distance between the nose line and the chin will be
divided up into thirds. And there'll be wider. The amount of the bottom third will actually have the most
amount of space this time. Whereas the top
two-thirds will have an increasingly smaller
amount of space. Because again, it's
foreshortening in the opposite
direction this time around the bottom of the face
is what is closest to us. Well, the top of the
head is further away. You'll notice that
the juul looks much more square now two. Alright, and the eyes are
going to drop as well. So again, we'll take the
distance between the chin, the top of the head and
we'll divide it in half. And I would say it's going
to be about here. Okay. So this will be
where the ISC and you can see that they're
sitting quiet low. Now I am going to use just a straight line that runs from one side to the other. Because said before the
head or the eyes do sit on a flat plane. Alright. And then we'll lay in the ears. They going to sit much, much lower this time. Below the equator line that we laid in for the
sphere initially. And then we can
draw in the neck. The neck is just going to drop down from underneath the ears. We'll lay in the
trapezius muscles behind the neck cylinder. Then what's interesting
is we can start to lay in the side muscles except this time we're going to see
them come in a little bit. We'll also see that
underside plane of the jaw now defined. Okay, So we get something
that looks like this. It's an interesting
angle to present their head on because we
often don't see this stuff. At least an irregular
head drawing. That's where so
many people find it extremely difficult to draw
the head from this angle. It always comes out
looking weird for them. Might've been coming out
looking weird for me. Actually. I won't speak too soon to go ahead and lay in the
head planes. Okay. So we got the plane divisions around the outside of the brow. And then we'll lay in
the plane division separating the front of
their face from the sides of the face. From this angle. It's going to look a
little bit like this. It'll say that the
chin is going to be quiet a lot broader as well. Good to mention
that the width of the chin actually increases. Quite a lot since it's
closest to us now. Okay, So rather than everything narrowing out toward
the bottom of the face, it's going to extend, it's going to grow wider. Wonderful. Now I'm just going to
increase size of my head here so that we can get
a better look at it. There we go. And oftentimes it's difficult for me to
draw at this level of scale. By the way, I like to draw
things from a distance. Really zoomed out to
begin with so that I've got an overall look at how
it's all coming together. So this should be interesting. Observe how this comes out. Alright, so let's
start with the eyes. Now. In simple terms. The eyes from the bottom up front view are going
to look like this. They're going to be
flat along the bottom. Then they're going to be
arched along the top. Like a setting sun. You want to
complicate the shape. Then it would look a
little bit more like this. You'd have bottom
of the eye here. And the top of the eye, Then the side of the eye. So again, that eye
shape is foreshortened. And we can also see how it follows the curve
of the eyeball. So we're going to keep that in mind as we now lay in the eyes. Remember we want an
equal width between HIS. So we'll quickly sketch this in. And what I want you to
notice here as I do, is how I'm keeping
these lines quite straight as I lay in the
initial draft for the eye. Look at the shape
that I'm using here. Try to imitate it. Especially if you're
having trouble capturing that the right shape for the I is that you're looking for. Because once you've
got that down, you can simply go
over the top of it. And in fact, I'll,
I'll lay in the other 1 first because this
really helps with sizing and making
sure the eyes are positioned where
they need to be. Without over complicating
things too much. This nice curve happening
around the bottom of the eye. I'm really thinking about how the top eyelid and
the bottom eyelid are going to follow the
curve of the eyeball. And now I'll refine
that shape at basic shape that I used
initially. To draw this in. I'm just going around the
outside of that shape, which I sketched in lightly. I'm refining it now. I really want to
give the sense like with looking up at the eye here. So I'm thinking about
the eyeball as well. How the eyelids are
wrapping around it. Okay, Cool. So we've got
the basic shape laid in there and try to get your
eyes to be the same size. I can already tell that one of my eyes is probably
bigger than the other. They look about right though,
so it should be fine. Just don't, don't flip
your canvas around and you can hide from your
asymmetry mistakes forever, as long as you don't do that. Okay, next up, we'll
draw in the eyelashes. We're going to see more
of the top eyelashes this time around
than the bottom. I'm just really simplifying
the eyelashes in my head, but you can later on go with
whatever eyelash style U1. I like the Michael Turner look. You can go for something
else if you like. Probably a little bit too thick of an eyelash for
a male character. But it'll work for now. This time around autumn set of eyelashes
will be narrower, wouldn't see as much of them. So we get the inverse effect of what the head appears as when we're
looking down on it. When we're drawing
it from below. Sketching out the
basic shape for the eyelashes on
the opposite eye. Filling them in
very, very roughly. We'll do that for both
the bottom set of eyelashes and the top
set of eyelashes. So that's how I sorted. Difficult to draw
from this angle. Again, because we're
just not used to it. It's a different eye shape. We'd been learning how to draw rise all over again basically. Okay, next up, we're going
to go ahead and start to place in some of the
surrounding eye anatomy which can be tough. So we've got this ridge here. Well, you can think of
this particular ridge as the the edge of the eye socket. The edge of the eye
socket at least, which will lead up into the
edge of the top eye socket. So we'll do that on
both sides or our eyes. And we can see more of
that top eyelid there. In this view, you might have to make a few
tweaks here and there. I certainly do my eraser
out, trimming things up. Nursing. I'm Vanessa
when it comes to my art. And it's good to be a
Vanessa to a certain point. Next up, we'll draw in
the pupils and the iris. Now this is important
to keep in mind. Remember that a pupil sits back into the iris a little bit. So by looking at
the IRS from below, the people, it's going
to be sitting back here. Same deal on our eyes. In this illustration. Drawing the pupil and what well, it will draw on the
iris to begin with. But then that iris is
going to be sitting down here inside the pupil. It's not going to be sitting up here because that
would look weird. It's gonna be sitting
down inside the iris. So we'll put it down there. And we'll do the same on
the opposite eye as well. Now of course, that's only
if the eyes are looking up. They could be
looking down at you and it would be different case then it's just worth
keeping in mind. We'll add another
reflection to our eye. And there's another
thing that's worth noting here when it comes to
drawing the head from below. That is, remember that we've got this membrane that sits
over the top of the iris. And so what does
that membrane do? Well, it actually pushes the top eyelid up when we're
looking upward. So we're going to
want to want to push that top eyelid up as needed. So it actually changes the
shape of the eye itself. Alright, next we'll
draw in the eyebrows. Now the eyebrows are sitting
all the way up here. So what we'll do first up is it's trying to capture
good shape for them. Rather than slanting downward. They're going to be slanting
upward this time around, since we're looking at
the head from below. Again, another inversion that will happen in comparison
between these two head views. I'm adding a little bit of
shape there to the eyebrow. Want it to be too box-like. Much. It's starting to look box-like. So there's a shape, a bit. Same deal on the opposite side. Drawing a basic eyebrow shape. Pull it back down into a point. Not thinking about
the eyebrow hair, not thinking about any of the other added
complications that come beyond that basic
Irish brow shape. Because it's really
that shape that matters at this point in time. So I don't like to
think too far ahead. I like to focus on place I met within the illustration
at the moment. And I build on top of that
as I progress through it. But if I start to think
about everything all at once and I start
to stress about it. I'm gonna freak myself out. I get all anxious about what it is I'm working on and that's the last thing I want to
have fun when I'm drawing. I want it. I'm gonna
be challenged, but I also want it to be easy. I don't want it to be and surmountable challenge
every single time. Now that we've got the
eyebrow shape drawn in, we can focus on getting
those eyes, eyebrows, strands place down, varying up their placement in
comparison to one another. We don't, we don't want too
many patterns happening. You don't want the eye to click on to any patterns anyway. So randomize the distancing
between these eyebrows. Eyebrows up for his son, clusters of eyebrow for
that are close together, some that are further apart. Surprise the viewer. Okay, that's our eyebrows down. We can add in a little
bit of rendering around this area is oftentimes what
ends up happening is shadow. Darker tones get caught in here due to the planes that we're dealing
within that area. Sometimes you can get complete thick shadow happening
in this place right here. But we won't we
won't take it that far today. We'll just
leave it as that. I think that works
for now as is. Alright, this is
the tricky part. This is where we're going
to now draw in the nose. And the nose is
no easy task from this angle because it
can quickly all go wrong in end up fast with a character that
looks like they have a snout rather than a nose. So be very careful about how much of that bottom plane of the nose you
can actually see. Now the top of the nose is
going to start up here. And the bridge will
come all the way down. But the underside
plane of the nose, where is that going to sit? Well, this is where the placement of the
nose is going to be. As always, we'll
drop the bottom of it just below that soap. Really this placement
for the nose is usually about the middle of the
noise, the middle point. And so that underside plane of the noise is
probably going to be, well, it might actually be
shifted up quite a lot. So maybe to about here. I'm guessing at this point. That's what I'm going
to start out with, is that underside noise playing, basically sketch it in there. And you'll notice
that the back of this nose plane is
actually going to follow the cylindrical
form of the mouth muzzle. We talk about the mouth muzzle
in a later lesson as well. By the way, when we focus
on facial features, specifically, that looks
about right for the nose. We're going to draw in the anatomy for the
underside plane now, which mostly consists of
the nostril openings. Now as I said, you can get some really extreme angles
for the head that place the tip of the nose above
the the head itself. Now the nostril openings. And you can see the shadow
that I placed in there. I'll leave the shape of a, you can think of it
as an upside down comma six, the number six. That's where the shadow
would be anyway. And I mean, the actual nostril opening itself usually looks
a little bit like this. Okay, and then traveling up
into the nostril opening, we get that cache shadow is
what gives you the shape. Usually the underside of the nose is actually
placed into shadow. So there'll be some subtle
rendering there sometimes. And then we've got the
sidewalls of the nose here to going to run
down into the cheekbone, the top of the cheek bone, and also ridge of
the eye socket. So we'll actually see
that defined here. Just underneath the eye. So that's the nose. Again, pretty darn complicated
to draw from this angle. It'll take some practice. So it makes sure that you fill your sketchbook up
with the pages of the nose shot from below and you'll get more
comfortable with it. Again, it's about thinking of
the basic representation of the nose block form and how that looks
from different angles. And in this particular example, we're looking at it from below. The nose bridge is going
to be foreshortened. We're going to see more
of the bottom nose plane. And these side planes are actually going to shift in
terms of their angle as well. All important things to
think about and consider. Next, we'll lay in the mouth. The mouth is going to follow a curve in the
opposite direction. So it's going to be a sad mouth. Now instead of a happy mouth. Again, it's all due
to the mouth muzzle. But you can think of as
being like a tuna can. I like to reshape it a little bit into something
more like this. But that's what
we're working with. So we'll start with the
middle of the mouth. Rule, the rest of the
opening downward. And of course this time
it's going to be wide, it's going to be quiet. Why? Because it's closest to us. So even though it would usually aligned with
the middle of the eye, well, it's going to spread
out further apart this time. Beyond that middle
point of the eye. Will see the bottom
of the top lip. At least we'll see more
of it in this view. And then we'll define
it ever so slightly, taking it down into the
corners of the mouth. You can see the whole
face looks squashed from this angle and it's
because it is squashed, the foreshortening
is squashing it. It looks dramatically different. You can have a person
that looks entirely like a different person from these
different points of view. Then we've got the bottom lip. Then it'd be seeing
less of its top plane. And then we've got this
underside plane that sits below the bottom lip and ends up joining onto
the top of the chin. We'll add in a little bit
of shading to the top lip. Not too much, just
a subtle amount. Now, this still looks
a little bit off. So what I'm going to do
is tweak the chin a bit. I'm actually bring
that up somewhat. And it's about getting
everything right when compared to everything else. So now I'm looking
at where I've placed the facial features and I'm looking at where
the jaw line is. And I see that these two things,
they're not matching up, even though I went
through the process of laying down
those foundations, trying to get them as
accurate as possible. But there is a point where
your eye comes into it. And even if, even if in
reality this angle does look a little bit weird to observe a
person on, in a comic book. It's gonna look kinda good. It shouldn't look very weird. That's the, that's the thing
about drawing comic books is you're, you're
tweaking things. You're printing things up. You're creating a rosier
image of reality. Because this is a
less common view that most people
draw the head on. It's, it's more
uncomfortable for them. And I can certainly say
that even about myself were often drawing
heads from hello or, well, sorry, we're often drawing heads story
from the front, from the side or
their standard views. But then when we're drawing
it from below or above, it gets a bit trickier. In saying that there
was a panel that I drew up recently for a comic
book that I'm working on, which was showing a
woman's head from below. And I implemented a lot of this stuff that I'm
showing you right here. It always works better
when you're not on show, demonstrating for other
people for some reason. But nonetheless, these rules
certainly still apply. And one thing that I'm probably going to
do here as well is just Shift down the top of
the head ever so slightly. I can see that that needs
to come down lower. And I'm also going
to place the curve, especially on the forehead,
the front of the head. On a little bit of an angle, a little bit more
of an angle two. So let's say that this is
the top of the head here. Well, I'm actually going to have more of a like
rather than a perfect curve. It's going to
foreshortened toward the top of that spherical shape. Toward the top of the cranium? Yes. Creating more of
an egg-like shape around the sides here as well. We're going to push
that angle more. Again. It's all to do it that foreshortening
that's taking place. It's morphing their head in really weird and
interesting ways. In order to capture
that accurately with the idealized representation of the human head proportions. You've got to know how
they shift and how they are modified according to these different viewpoints. All right, so again, getting out my eraser, trimming it up a little bit, caving bits of the form off. Just like it was
a place of clay. I do wish that you could just depend on the foundations and the construction process to nail a perfect hair each
and every single time. But you just can. You've gotta have
some creative input. It's not mathematics. So we will round out the top of the head
a little bit more here. And even flattened it
out here on the bottom. Main heck, the top of
the head here is getting the most amount of modification, the most amount of attention
out of everything else. It's the outline actually
of the anything you draw that that matters quite
a considerable amount. Can be the outline of the head. It can be the outline of the
facial features on the hair. They can be talking
about the full figure. It can be the outline
of the body overall. Can be the outline
of the muscles that sit within the body. It's all about that
outside shape. Making sure that that's at
vivid and captured correctly, as correctly as you
can capture it. Okay, Well, I think
that looks pretty good. Now the final thing we
need to do is the ears, because we forgot
about the ears. So let's go back
and address them. I'm going to do some
cleaning up here because it's getting
a bit messy. Get my eraser out and we go, That's looking much better. We certainly don't want one ears sticking out more
than the other, and we do want them to
be at the same height. That's important. I have been
called out for that before a Clayton did you know that one year is sitting
higher than the other? That's the worst because sometimes you don't
notice it yourself. And again, that's what
I'm talking about, that reticular
activation system, you want to get trained in
noticing that kind of thing. Cross checking, making sure
everything's on point. You don't know what
to look for in the beginning. It's difficult. That's half the challenge
is knowing what to look for as far as mistakes are
concerned and whatnot. And then of course,
knowing how to fix those mistakes.
Okay, There we go. Next, let's lay in
the frame of the ear. Now this time it's foreshortened in the opposite direction. So we're going to see some interesting changes within the way in which the
anatomy is represented. Here. We go. That ear is, anatomy is bulging
out way too much there. Look swollen, so we'll
bring it in a bit. Move over to the ear on the
opposite side of the head. There we go. Again, just trying to describe that anatomy as best as we can. Kind of figure out what parts of the anatomy will be seen, what posits of the
anatomy won't be seen. So a lot of mental processing. You can walk away from dead the drawing board and just
feel mentally exhausted. But hey, it's a
lot of fun though. It is a lot of fun. It's very fulfilling. I think, especially when you've
been productive. The drawing board. A cool. So we've got the
ears drawn in there. I think that just about wraps up our first bottom-up head view.
5. Bottom Up Three Quarter View: Now let's draw up the bottom-up
three-quarter view of the head. Will lay in a sphere. Try to get that sphere measured up to our previous
heads so that we can get them all nice and
lined up next to one another at the same scale. Drawing it in lightly, keeping my grip
loose, lines, soft. I'm going to lay in the
axes and that's going to, you can see there's
a bit of a tilt happening because the
head is looking up. And we'll have that coming through the top
and at the bottom. We'll draw in a
horizontal guideline. Will wrap around the
equator of the sphere. It's a bit like a spinning top. And then we've got
the center line. I'm going to market
at about here. By doing that, it makes it much easier for us to bring that line around the curve of the
rest of the sphere. Amartya bottom here as well. Then we'll draw on
that side plane. I'm going to mark the width of the side plane
at about there. And then when the rest of it. Okay, cool. So that's our cranium
figured out from this angle. Next, let's lay in the
center line of the face. Take that down to about here. That looks pretty good.
Place in the chin. Next, we'll capture
the jaw line. I think the jaw shape
again is probably one of the most difficult aspects of drawing the head
from this angle. Because we're just
not used to seeing it shaped at these angles. But as I said before, the general draw shape, as it lifts up is eventually
going to lift up so high that it in fact inverts. Alright? So just think
of it like that. And it will make it easier
even if it's only an outline. Of course, from the
three-quarter view. Let's say that the jaw line
would usually be like this. Well, that's three-quarter
view as it lifts up. That's going to change. Eventually. It will also invert. Join the opposite
side of the face now. Bring down the other
side of the jaw. Lift the chin up a bit more. I think that's looking at kay? Really roughly draw in
the ear very lightly. And then draw in the
back of the neck. And I'm actually going to
re-size it so that once again, it's roughly the same size as
the head we did previously. We'll figure out where
the nose is going to be by dividing the distance between the brow
line and the chin in half. And because we're looking at a foreshortened view of
the head from below. While that positioning
is going to be probably about here,
I would estimate. Then we'll divide
the bottom half of the face up into thirds. Shortening the distance between those thirds as we
go up the head. Because the bottom
is closest to us. So in contrast, it's going to widen the
distance between them. Wonderful. Next up, we'll add in the eyes. So the eyes are going to take the midway point
between the top of the head, the top of the face
here in the chin. I'm going to just estimate
that it would be about here. Drawing the head planes. You can see that I've
drawn in the roof of the brow, the
underside plane. We've got a protruding
outward on an angle. I'm also going to go ahead here and lay in the mouth muzzle, describing the shape of the face and that
three-quarter angle. And find that this is
just tends to help me shape the face properly.
On this angle. Sculpting and add a bit
there. Getting sketchy. When I'm getting
sketch, it usually means that I know what
the heck I'm doing. And I'm exploring
with the pencil. Anyway, I think
that'll do for now. I'm just going to put
it on the back burner. And I'm going to start to
lay in the facial features. And now from this angle, the basic shape for the I
is going to be this shape. So going with that, start sketching in the eye, following the curve
of the eyeball. And then we've got the nose. The nose is going to be obscuring the opposite
eye quite a lot. Okay, it's the
bridge of the nose, maybe even the tip of the nose. So what I'm gonna
do is I'm going to draw this little guideline out shooting from the
front of the face. Then I'll draw in the
underside plane of the nose. Now I'll draw back the
bridge and then I'll reshape it once I've got that general block
form placed in. I sometimes will use these
simple block forms as a guide, essentially in order
to figure out where my facial features
are going to be placed and how they're
going to be placed. So then from that, again, thinking of it like a, like a piece of clay, start drawing out
the rest of it. Once again, this is a very
difficult angle to draw on. Some days will be
easier than others. I'll draw in the
industrial opening. Now that I'm happy with
how things are looking. What's also tough is that even though these facial
features are foreshortened here, they should be foreshortened
relative to everything else. So in other words,
you don't want, even though the nose
might be bigger, you don't want it
to be bigger in comparison to everything else. It should be still
within the issue, still uphold the
proportional relationships it has with the other
facial features. If indeed it's supposed to be an idealized nose with an
idealized size and shape. And perfecting that
shape or more. Trying to get it to look right here you can see
the opposite eye is going to be so hidden now. So I'll draw on the
top of it there, but most of it is
obscured at this point. Now clean up, this is
sketchiness a bit. Fill in the nostril with black because it would be a fairly hard shadow happening
in that area. Now, I'm just tweaking
the nostril shapes, trying to get it just
the way that I want it. But this cushioning a little
bit at the tip of the nose, which sometimes
you'll see it again. Just start out with this basic block
formation for the nose. That'll allow you to get
those nostrils placed it. And I kinda deviated away from
that basic model a little. And I think I paid for it,
to be honest with you. What I'm gonna do is just
another crack at that. Okay, that's better.
So you keep it simple. Keep it simple, stupid. That's the rule of
thumb to keep in mind. When it comes to this stuff. As soon as it gets
over complicated, That's when you
run into problems. Alright? Then we'll draw in the
side of the nostril there. It's not perfect this nose, but we'll leave it as is for a moment and maybe
come back to it. Okay, So now the, the, I will jump back to that, drawing the eyelashes very quickly defining
the shape for them. Fill them in with black. So draw some eyelashes along
the bottom of the eye there. In a set of eyelashes sense, we can't see as much of
the top of them anymore. Then we'll draw in the eyelid by defining the inner edge of the eye socket and the top ridge of the
eye socket. Like so. I'm placing the
iris and the pupil, which is going to
sit into the iris. Add a little reflection
in there just to give the eyes
a nice wet look. And then we want to
add in the eyebrows. So we get a
foreshortened look at the eyebrow shape
from this angle to now they're going to be pushed further forward than they usually would be due
to the geometry of the head shifting with this new position that we're
observing them head on. And I'm going to try
to have that eyebrow follow the angle of the eyeline because everything should. The boxes, being aware
of the head is being presented in perspective just like this box here
that I'm drawing. Everything on this, this phase plane should be
following that perspective. The ear would be over here. So that's essentially
what's happening. That's how you, you kinda make sure that things are looking in perspective the way
that they should be. But making sure that they
align along that perspective. As always, I'm taking
my time to capture a nice shape. The eyebrow here. I'll do the same thing
on the opposite side. And from this angle we're
going to really see how the underside plane of the brow pills around
and back into the head. Okay, cool. There we go. You're going to see the top of the upper eye socket there. Just a sneak peak of it popping
out from behind the nose. Sometimes we think that
everything has to be shown. And I both eyes, we need
to see both eyes and their full completion at all times if we're looking at the head no
matter what the angle, but actually no,
that's not true. Sometimes there's going to be certain facial features that are very hidden and obscure and by others that are shifting due to the crazy perspectives that the head is being presented on. That nose is looking good. Now I'm happy with it. Now we'll draw in some eyebrow first some texture
into the eyebrows. Now the mouth. Now, in order to draw the mouth, I mean, you can keep
it pretty simple. You can have just, you
can start out with a line that follows the
trajectory that you want the mouth to be on. Let's say, for example, this. Once you've got
that line in there, you just add in the
middle of the mouth. You pull out the
sides of the mouth, lead them into the corners. Do the same thing on
the opposite side. And then draw on that top lip. Now remember the top
lip is going to come out would it won't
go straight up. It will actually come
out on an angle. It's important to keep in mind. Then we've got the bottom lip. Remember as well that
the underside plane that comes down just below the bottom lip is going to
go back on an angle too. Now of course, we can break this outline for the
top lip as well, especially on a guy. In some facts, some people,
just, some artists, they just leave the outline for the top lip completely
and they don't even bother putting it in
if they're drawing a man. So just keep that in mind. I'm really only
outlining it here for you so you can
see the shape. Sometimes what I'll do is I'll, I'll place it into shadow. Okay. Now, as I
was saying before, side of the face and its shape will consist of
the cheekbone, the mouth, muzzle, and then the chin, which will lead
down into the neck. And C here as well that I
am most certainly trimming back the chin and the jaw line and I'm
reshaping at re tweaking it. The bottom plane and
the jaw line there. We'll add an a darker
outline over the top of the jaw line to define it, making it nice and vivid. Now sometimes that
undecided plane in a finished drawing will
be completely cost in black shadow.
Sometimes it won't be. It depends on the style. Depends on how much
shadow typically you like to use within
your comic book art. Sometimes there'll be rendered, sometimes there'll
be just left blank. And it'll be left up to
the colorist to describe that plane shift as it
faces away from the line. Okay, next up, we'll
lay in the ear. Starting with it's
outside shape. Defining that. From the top all around, all the way around
to the bottom. Instead, it's done. And we'll take our time to
tweak the shape of the ear, by the way, all the
facial features. We'll take our time to
really nail down that shape. Once it's nailed down, start to looking a little bit too wide for
the here at this angle. Sometimes you only catch
things after the fact. You hear professional comic book artist like David Fincher say that all the
time work will go through to print and it'll only be after it's printed
that you might notice, Oh, ****, you made a
mistake. Isn't good. Of course. Just know though that this happens to a
lot of different artists. And the best you can do in
order to become a pro is to notice those
mistakes so that you can fix them before
it goes to print. Alright, so then we've got
the inner frame of the ear, which we'll transition into this Y-shaped piece of cartilage that kinda protrudes
out of the ear. And then we'll
draw the bottom of that down into the
base of the ear. Have a transition into the ear opening or the ear
opening covering rather. Then we'll bring that out
of cartilage back in. Girls in on itself. The ear anatomy. Again,
it's a little tricky, but it's something
that you work on. And you get better
at with repetition. Like practicing a song
or remembering a script. Sounds really cheap
to just say practice. That's true. That's what it is. But it's about You might, I could give you the
manual to fly a plane, but you don't go into
knowing how to fly it. Straightaway just because
I've given you the manual, you'll need to practice
it a few times. Hopefully you I need to crash in order to learn how to do it, but you get my meaning. Okay, So we've got
the ear drawn in. Now it's time to shape and finesse the top of the
skull a little more. You're going to flatten
that out on top a little. Bring it all the way back. Transition into the back
portion of the skull, and then down into the neck. Define the outline of the
neck a little bit more. Indicate that main band like neck muscle runs down from the ears and answer
the collarbone. And that is that. That completes the bottom up view of the
three chord ahead.
6. Head Perspective Exercise: So to get an added
handle on this stuff, I want to show you a
really quick exercise and you can practice this for
homework if you would like. But it's very, very simple. And it'll help you to get
your head around this stuff. No pun intended. But if you want to get good at drawing the face from
different angles, start off with just
the basic phase plane. Okay, So let's say
you wanted to draw the face from below and you are having
some trouble with it. Well, start with this
basic shape, right? Let's say that the
eyes are going to sit in the middle of this
shape. I'm sitting there. We've got the nose, facial features, plot them out and where they're
supposed to go. But you can take this
very basic face shape and draw it up from
any angle you like. And what it's going to do
is allow you to be able to practice just for shortening where the facial
features should be. You don't have to draw
facial features on there. I mean, you could,
if you wanted to, you could make it as complex
and complicated as you like. If you want to draw the
block form nose in. Sometimes that's fun to do. Heck, you could make it
a triangle. If you want. Something very, very simple. But really just plotting
out the proportions or little dashes for eyes
will really help you out. Okay, is another example here. The nose, we've got the
positioning of the mouth. Look at a little
dash for the eyes, triangle for the nose. And just practice drawing the facial features
in perspective and taking note on what happens when you begin
to foreshortened them. Now what you could
do when you're feeling confident with that is you can go ahead and actually
apply them onto a block. And you're not necessarily
going to use this as a construction
method for your heads. But what it'll do
is it'll just help, help you to understand what's happening when you
throw the head into perspective and
start drawing it in a foreshortened men at what's happening with the
facial features. And I sincerely think that this could help you
out in a big way. Because this cube form isn't
that far of a stretch. When it comes to
the head itself. There's actually a lot
of characteristics that are indeed shares. And you know, you could
develop this further and further as much as you like, like if we were to
actually turn this into an actual finished head, you could very quickly do that like you could
just build on top of this row in the cheek
bone and the chin, or in the jaw line, the ears. You might have to rejig the proportions of
the box to suit the head, but it'll, it'll give you an added level of three-dimensional
reality, I believe, to the representation of
your heads if you are able to practice it and really
try to understand it. So it's just a really
quick little tip. I thought I'd leave
you with practice it throughout the week and also practice the other head examples that we went over
in this lesson. And hopefully by the end
of the week you'll have a, you'd be feeling a
little more confident with them because they
are difficult angles. The intimidating for most people even will experienced artists. And the way in which you get around that is you just
draw them over and over again until you become completely familiar with
them like an old friend. Alright, that's it.
7. Dynamic Heads Assignment: Hey, it's Clayton again. I hope you enjoyed the class. Now it's time for
the assignments so that you can put
what you've learned into action and
really assimilate these skills so that you can
take full advantage of them. First up, I'd like you to
break open your sketchbook or your favorite digital
drawing application and draw your own dynamic
heads from the top-down, Top-down, three-quarter,
bottom-up and bottom-up three-quarter
perspective is that we covered
throughout this class. But then taking
the tools that we learned about as far as turning the basic foundational
structure of the head in space, I'd like you to really
challenge yourself. See what other
angles you can draw the head on by thinking of
it in that simplified way. And let me know how you go
post your assignments in the project section of this class because I
would love to see them. Alright, that's it. Until next time. Good luck.