How to Draw the Head from Every Angle: Part Three

1. Welcome: Welcome to the third and final class on how to draw the head from every angle. In part one, we learned about the basic structure of the head, applying this information to our own characters, and then drawing our character's head rotating on the y axis. Part two was much more hands on, building and getting to know our characters from the ground up. Learning to use front and side view drawings from part one, to help us make our 3D clay models of our character's head. Now finally in part three, all your hard work is going to finally pay off. In this class, I'm going to show you how to use your 3D model to draw your character's head on the x, y, and z axis. I'll then add to this by layering in facial expression and show you how this will literally bring your characters to life. The reference that you create in this class will not only guarantee to save you hours of time and potential mistakes when moving forward with a picture book or a storyboard of some kind, but more importantly, you'll continue to develop a familiarity with your character and this will in effect, move you away from copying your character to knowing your character and this will have a huge impact on the quality of the illustrations that you end up with. In this class, you'll need your 3D model, a lead pencil, a conte pencil, and a blue colored pencil. You´ll also need an eraser, a sharpener, I'm using a smudge stick for some of the work and a long ruler, and you'll also need a large sheet of paper. I like to use an A2 bank pad as it's fairly inexpensive, it's really smooth and it's also thin enough to be able to seen through. If you like this class or find any of the information helpful, please leave a review as it gives the class more visibility on skill share so that more people can find it and take part. I can't wait to get started. If you want to join me, click on the enroll button and I'll see you shortly. 2. Drawing the Head on the X-Axis: In this lesson, I'll show you how to draw your character's head rotating on the x-axis. The x-axis is basically when your character's head moves up and down. Here, I've divided my paper in half, vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. This will give me the x, y, and z axis. I'm now using an egg cup to trace a circle in the center of the page and two circles out along each axis line. From the center, you can see how that character's head is going to tilt up and down along that x-axis line. I'm going to torn and place the sheet underneath. My paper is thin enough that I can see through and use it as a guide for my multiple drawings on top. Using the guidelines from the page underneath, I'm now drawing the front view of my character's head. The first drawing will be in the very center of the page where all the access lines cross. I'm making sure to keep my character's head within the circle guide. Along the x-axis, I'm now going to draw my character's head looking up, tilting their head about 30 degrees. You can see that is sit much lower when you tilt the head up and the hair line is different as well. You can see much less of the top of their head and can see a lot more of underneath the chin area. You can also see under there nose and and also the hare comes underneath the actual head itself. Tilting their head up another 30 degrees, you can see how different the character looks. Again, the ears much lower down. There's a lot more chin area. You can also define where the jaw sits. You can also see write up under the nose. Sometimes the chicks may even cover where the eyes rest. You can see the entire hairline is very different. You can hardly see the top of their head. Now, from the center character, we're going to start tilting the character's head the opposite way. We're going to tilt it 30 degrees down and draw the character looks like from this angle, you can seen a far more of the top of their head. You hardly see the chin area and you probably won't see the neck either. You can see just the lid of the eyes, but not much more than that. Now, tilting the character's head another 30 degrees down, you're looking at the character pretty much from above. I have a slightly different angle to what you see in the camera. But you can see a much larger mass of hair. You can see the character's cheeks and the nose, a little hint of the eyes, but the eyebrows sit quite closely above the eyes and you don't see the chin or the neck at all. Here, we have at the character's head tilting up and down on the x-axis. 3. Drawing the Head on the Y-Axis: Welcome back. In this lesson, I'll show you how to draw your character's head rotating on the y-axis. The y-axis is when your character's head moves from left to right. Now, because we've covered this already in part 1, I won't go into as much detail, but we are rotating the character's head 30 degrees to one side. At this point, you can say most of the facial features have shifted to the left third of the head. There is a strong line marking the nose and the eye brow. You can see one eye completely and the other eyes is partly hidden behind the nose. Rotating the head another 30 degrees and you can see your character from the side. You will only see one eye, the side of the nose, the profile of the nose, the top lip, the bottom lip, the chin, and the ear sits much further back than we would have first thought. Now, I'm mirroring the character on the other side. We are doing all the facial features on the other third of the face, and the nose, the eyes, the cheeks, the mouth, and the neck. Like I did before, I'm mirroring the other side of the character. So drawing another sighed profile, my character looks very similar on both sides. But if your character has maybe a side piercing or since style hairline or an eye that looks different, it would be quite helpful to know what they look like on both sides. Here, we have my character's head rotating on the y-axis. In my next lesson, I'll be drawing the head tilting on the z-axis. 4. Drawing the Head on the Z-Axis: Welcome back. In this lesson, I'll be showing you how to draw a character's head moving on the z-axis. The z-axis is when you character's head tilts and moves up and down at the same time. You can see here, I'm not just tilting my character's head to the left 30 degrees, but I'm also tilting the head up 30 degrees at the same time. You can see how the character's head on the z axis is a movement between the x and the y-axis. Once again, I'm tilting the head up another 30 degrees, as well as to the side and another 30 degrees. You can see under the nose and the chin, and above the cheeks, you can just about see both of the eyes. You can seen also the hair, you can't see much at the top there hair, but you can see the hair going all the way around the head. From the center, we're now tilting the head down 30 degrees and to the other side 30 degrees and we have yet another look. You see a large mass for the top of the head, but you see very little of the chin and the neck and most of the features are moved to one-third of the face. Tilting the head down another 30 degrees and also to the side another 30 degrees, it's basically the top of the head on a tilt, seeing very little of the facial features, a little bit of the ear, and mostly the top of the head. Mirroring the same on the other side, here we've tilted the head down 30 degrees and to the left 30 degrees, drawing the head to the side and slightly and looking down. Taking it one step further and we tilt the head for another 30 degrees down and another 30 degrees across and you mostly see the top of the head and little bit of the nose and absolutely no chin or neck. I'm going to do the same now, looking up, moving up 30 degrees and also to the right, another 30 degrees and we're seeing a very different view, so much less of the top of the head and the hair, and much more of the chin, under the chin and under the nose area. Taking it one step further, and we're looking at the head tilted another 30 degrees up and to the side and you can see right under the chin and you can see that hairline going right around the face and you can see right under the nose and the eyebrows. Here we have it, my character's head drawn on the z axis. In the next lesson, I'm going to bring my characters to life by combining both the head movement and facial expression. 5. Facial Expression on the X-Axis: Welcome back. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how I bring my characters to life by combining both the head movement with the facial expression. Using a blew pencil, I've traced three rows of four showing my character's head in different positions. One line shows four variations of the head moving on the x-axis. The second line shows four variations of the head moving on the y-axis, and the last line shows variations of my character's head moving on the z-axis. Now it's time to layer different facial expressions over the top of these head positions. If you haven't done so already, you might like to enroll in my emoji me, the art of facial expression class, where I walk you through the six basic emotions as well as the sub promotions that branch out from the basic six. Let's get started. hear I am drawing the line of characters on the x-axis. This character is looking down, and I'm going to make the face look a little bit angry. I've got the eyebrows pointing in at the center, and I'm just drawing with them a darker pencil now over the top of the blue line. You can seen how that works really well, the dark pencil stands out and the blue line is not quite far back. I'm doing the opposite now. I'm drawing my character, looking up at the clouds, looking up at the sky, could be looking up at anything, but it's quite handy to known what the character looks like from this angle. So you can see, I'm drawing the eyes almost closed. Maybe it's full of billion excitement in the eyes and the expression is closed. I'm going to make this character look really happy. I'm going to draw the mouth stretched across. Now because we're at this angle, the mouth is curved the other way. Even though we are smiling and I'm pushing the cheeks up as well with the size of the mouth, and here the ear is actually quite low down and you can just see that the hairline all the way around on that character. For this one I'm drawing the character looking down. I'm not just tracing, I also have my 3-D model with me, so I'm referring to the model and also the trace. I found that when I have all these different types of reference, I get a much better idea of what I want my character to look like. This character is looking quite peaceful, and I'm not seeing much of the mouth will probably be very small indication of the mouth. Here we are with the fourth variation, and I'm tilting the head slightly, even though it's looking straight on, I'm just tilting the head so that I get a variation. I'm just deciding on what I'm going to do with the facial expression. I'm going to have the character looking up and possibly a little confused. I [inaudible] up in one push down, drawing in the here and down turned mouth, and here I have my full characters on the x-axis. 6. Facial Expression on the Y-Axis: Welcome back. Here I'll be layering facial expressions over the top of head positions on the y-axis. Here I'm drawing all the essential lines, I'm drawing the outline of the face. I'm still deciding on what emotion to place, I'm going to do, probably shocked. I've got a small mouth, and there's lots of white in those eyes. With my second character, you can seen I'm drawing and tracing the hairline, and I'm drawing the side of the face. I'm leaving a space where the eyelash may go, and I'm just placing where the eyes are going to go. They're closed at the moment, and that's quite happy actually. I've got a small mouth underneath, but what I'm going to do is just broaden that grin. Then I'm just drawing a line for where the cheek goes and the neck. Moving on to a bit of detail around the mouth, putting in some pupils, and moving on to the next character, where I'm going to start outlining the sides of the face, and so the essentials, I guess. Where the eyes are going to be positioned, the outline of the hair and the eyebrows. The final character is a side view, but I've just tilted the head up. I've moved the eyes so that the character looks like it's looking up. I'm keeping it really simple, the character got a lovely side profile. I'm just going to draw down the extension of the neck, and the chin, and keep it very simple. Here we have it, full variations of my characters head on the y-axis. Make sure to stick around and see the variations of my last set of characters. 7. Facial Expression on the Z-Axis: Welcome back and here I'll be layering facial expressions over the top of head positions on the z-axis. So here I have my character's head tilting up onto the side and I've elongated the neck so that's really captures head and neck is reaching up. I'm placing in the eyelashes, the eyebrows and a very wide grin. So with my second character, I'm placing the hair and the ears and I'm basically tracing all the essential positioning of the eyes and the nose, the hairline, the neck and the chin. I'm going to draw a sad face looking down. So here I'm just tracing the essentials, the hairline and my character's looking up and to the side. So I've got that nice elongated neck and I can see a little bit of the hair underneath the head as well and I can see underneath that nose also. The eyes nestle behind the cheeks and I'm opening the up to the eyes quite wide. So the eyebrows are going to be high as well and I'm just drawing the shape of the nose and the cheeks as well, I'm just putting in a funny tilted mouth. My final character is looking down and slightly to the side and so you'll see that tops of the eyes lids and the eyebrows quite high and you'll see the nose and the facial features arrow to the left side of the face. I'm not seeing much of the chin, and I've just got a lovely little neck line there too. Here we have it three rows of four showing my character's head in different positions. One line shows variation of the head moving on the x-axis, another line showing variations of the head with the motion on the y-axis, and the last line showing a variations of the head moving on the z-axis. I'm just adding in a bit of shading and detail, and then we have it. 8. To Finish: Well, congratulations. You've now completed the three-part series of how to draw the head from every angle. In part one, we learned about the basic structure of the head, applying this information to our own characters, and then drawing our character's head rotating on the y-axis. Part two is much more hands-on, building and getting to know our characters from the ground up. Learning to use front side view drawings from part one to help us make a 3D clay models of our character's head. Finally, in part three, we used our 3D models to draw our character's head on the x, y, and z axis with the addition of blaring in facial expression. For your project, if you post three drawings of your character's head, one on the x, one on the y, and one of the z-axis, then I'll send you my eye placement worksheet, where you can draw and explore your character even further. If you like this class or find any of the information helpful, please leave a review as it gives a class more visibility on Skill Share so that more people can find it and take part. Post your feedback and I look forward to seeing your projects.