How to Easily Draw a Portrait | Understanding Features & Proportions Part I | Messer Creations | Skillshare
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How to Easily Draw a Portrait | Understanding Features & Proportions Part I

teacher avatar Messer Creations, Artist | Author | YouTuber

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      2:52

    • 2.

      Step (1) Drawing out your Loomis Head

      2:02

    • 3.

      Step (2) Drawing out the Right Eye & Nose

      3:02

    • 4.

      Step (3) Drawing out the Left Eye & Mouth

      3:53

    • 5.

      Step (4) Drawing out Underlying Form & Hair

      4:02

    • 6.

      Step (5) Finishing Touches | Final Thoughts

      3:16

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500

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34

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About This Class

In this class, we will be going through the initial steps and drawing out a portrait using the  Loomis method based on reference. I will be taking you through each step in real-time so that you thoroughly understand what the entire process looks like. REMEMBER this is (1) of a (7) part series where I will be taking you through and sketching out a portrait based on (7) different references. I hope you upload your PROJECT and leave a REVIEW of the class :) 

You won't need much to draw along with me and ALL of the tools are listed down below under Amazon Affiliate links. 

Happy drawing my fellow artist :) Here are ALL the TOOLS you will NEED to draw along with me!

Reference photo via Google Docs: https://bit.ly/41GMq8T 

Mix media paper - https://amzn.to/3EfZ9DF

Compass set - https://amzn.to/3EekH3B

Sketchbook - https://amzn.to/3hv9thf

Colored Pencils - https://amzn.to/3OH1b51

I hope it helps and happy drawing! :) 

Meet Your Teacher

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Messer Creations

Artist | Author | YouTuber

Teacher
Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction : What's up, guys? Welcome to another class. My name is Brian Mercer. I'm an artist, YouTuber and I make content for the Internet of Things. I will be your instructor for this one. And I hope you're excited because I am. We are going to be covering how to draw a portrait and how to make sure that we nail the proportions and the features of a face. We are going to be using a reference photo right here. This beautiful marbled maiden. I'm going to be breaking it down step-by-step. First. We are going to be going over how you can look at the reference photo. And from there, render the perfect Lewis head by drawing your perfect circle and then your oval so that you can establish your site plan. Your vertical and horizontal axes. Punching in your hairline, your brow line, the bottom of your nose, and of course, the bottom of your chin. Once we have the Loomis had established, then we really start having fun. We will be drawing up the nose, the eyes, the mouth, talking about proportions to each and how you can nail those from the get-go. You're going to be talking about hatching and crosshatching or line work so that we can start to build out that underlying form in our sketch, as well as Mr. out the hair. Where does that hair actually sit on that perfect circle and boom, I said, we are going to be covering all of that and more. And just talking about art in general and how it applies to sketching out a portrait using the Louis said. Remember, this is 17 series set where we are going to be doing the exact same thing. Only, going to be using different references, different angles as it were. So that you can get a full immersion into the luminous method as it applies to all the angles that you would encounter when it comes to drawing portraits. So if you are new to this method, don't you stretch it all. I got links to all of the tools, paper, sketching, pencils. It's all right there in the description. I hope you enjoy it. And if you do leave a review, we always like to hear how we can improve. That's what to expect. I hope to see you in class. 2. Step (1) Drawing out your Loomis Head: So we're gonna wanna grab our campus and our green sketch pencil here. We're gonna take this and we're gonna set this to two. Place it right in the center of the paper. And just really lightly draw it or circle. Okay? So that's the first step. Notice the angle of the eyes. We want to follow that. So we're gonna take our pencil here and we're just gonna do a nice light oval. And that's the side plane. Now we're going to establish our vertical axis and our horizontal axes. There we are. And then I like to put a little plane right here for the temple. I kinda elongates that circle. And ours is going to pull these lines over. There is our hairline. And then our brow line right above the eyes, right there. Then the bottom of the nose, right about there. Then what I like to do is I like to find the center line of the face. Let's pull down nice and light. Make sure to use a real light pressure control. Then that is the bottom of the chin right about there. Then we're just going to pull up. Then from our vertical axis we'll pull that over that attach that chin. And notice when you look at the reference photo, notice how she is looking up. And so we're going to draw this out here. That is the bottom of the chin. And that's just about that. It took us less than two minutes. Let's not forget our cheek plane here. All right, there's the luma said, let's move on to less than two. 3. Step (2) Drawing out the Right Eye & Nose: Alright, here we go. So now this is the tricky part. But what we can do is we can use these lines that we've established with our Loomis head to start to identify where exactly to place those key features. Right about here is the nose. Remember that center line goes right down the middle of that nose. Then here we'll draw out the brow. And notice your features do not have to line up with the foundational lines of your luminous head. Whole point of Loomis head is to give you a rough foundation to be able to place your features and kinda let those artistic juices start to flow. Use the luminous lines as an approximate distance. For when you place your eyes and your nose, then you can put the bottom of the eye. Right about. Let's put it right there. Yes. It looks nice. And this is one of the reasons why I love to sketch like this guys is because sketching like this. It's just a sketch. It's not a masterpiece. You're not going to win any awards, but what you are going to accomplish, you're going to start to build muscle memory. The more heads that you draw, the more features that you sketch out. Like this, the better you will become. But all you have to do is stick to those three sections, right? Those three equal parts of the luma said, as far as your proportions are concerned. So we've been able to punch in the eye. We have a rough estimate of where the nose is. And then from here, what we can start to do is we can vary or pressure control. With our pencil. The lighter the pressure control, the higher the value because of the less of the pencil is actually being put onto the paper. And the heavier or pressure control, the lower the value, the more of that pencil is being put onto the paper. This is where you can start to play around with your line weights and accentuate certain features, such as the nose or the eyes, or the mouth, or the even the hair. So just doing a real rough sketch, something just like that. But what I wanted you to see in this step is that you don't need to abide specifically by the lines, like the brow line that is there to give you a rough guesstimate of where those eyes need to go so that your proportions are more accurate than if you were to just freehand it and not have those lines to base your features off of. Alright, so let's move on to lesson three. 4. Step (3) Drawing out the Left Eye & Mouth: Okay, so starting out less than three, now that we have the nose established, we can pull down here. And we can start to build out the upper lip. And remember, we're not winning any awards. Just focus on your proportions. Notice when you refer to the reference photo, now that top lip just barely extends past the left nostril of the reference. So we can use that to make sure that we get as accurate of a proportion as we can. Our mouth, to our nose, and then of course, the bottom lip using this particular sketch method, all it is is we're hatching and crosshatching here. That is all we're doing. This is a far cry from the three-layered method, but every artist draws using multiple techniques. Kinda like a chef, right? Chefs don't just cook one way all the time. They use different techniques from different shifts, different approaches and different dishes require different methods to cook. It's the exact same thing with drawing. Here, what we're doing is we are practicing the luminous method and we're practicing how to put features in proper proportion onto our Loomis head so that we can get as accurate of a quick sketch render as we can. So now here, notice I pulled out from that line. This is hatching here. Pulling one way. Attach, attach, attach and then see what. Because if you look at the reference photo, notice how there's that lower value, right? Because that's how the light is striking or subject. This is really what I wanted to show you here. Notice that see how we went from here. And then we went up and then I dotted the paper. That is the corner of our eye. Okay, so now what we're gonna do, I think I'm going to establish the bottom of the I pulled down over something like that. Notice how I was able to use my temporal plane on my Luma said to figure out exactly where I wanted to conclude that I, This right here is a prime example as to why using the luminous head will really help you nail your features as far as exactly where they go so that they don't look off. And then just real lightly, you can start to hatch and crosshatch if you will, and establish that brow. Because eyes sit in the eye socket right there, somewhat imbedded into the skull of the subject. So when we're drawing, we need to make sure that we recognize those different planes of the face. And then of course, as you hatch more and more in one spot, that value will lower. And then you'll have a nice contrast between your high values and your low value points in your drawing. But the biggest thing is to start light and then you can always go over certain spot in the drawing. Again to lower a value. That's pretty much that for less than three. Let's move on to listen for. 5. Step (4) Drawing out Underlying Form & Hair: Lesson four. In this one, what we're going to do is I'm going to show you some hatching tricks. I'm going to show you how we can draw out the rest of this face. Here. This is crosshatching first bit with when it was just one line, one way that's called hatching. When you cross it, it's called crosshatching. Effectively what it does is it gives us a little bit of texture, but it also provides form and it lowers our value for us. But notice that we're pulling up from that now, just up. And we're following the plane established by our cheek plane line that we drew when we first drew out or Loomis head. A lot of these lines you can play with the line quality in the line weight. Line quality is the relative thinness or thickness of a line. Line weight is how light or dark a line appears. So there is a correlation between line weight and land quality. Albeit they are different. But typically, the thicker line, the darker the weight, the thinner the line, the lighter line weight. Here we're just gonna do a real nice define line. And this is to establish the hair of this maiden. The bottom over here, something like that. Notice how quickly they were able to render guys. Again, this isn't a Mona Lisa by any means. But what we are doing is we are building that muscle memory and we are building our confidence. Don't worry about speed. Focus on technique, to focus on proportion. And speed will come in here somewhere. Something like that. Then her hair begins right about here. So it's going to continue to draw this out. Then she has a headband that goes across. But from this point in the class, I hope that you're starting to see that it's not necessarily the hair, that's the problem. It's not even the features of the reference like say, the headband or the neck or even the shoulders. Or most young artists struggle with portraits is proportion of eyes to nose, nose to mouth. That is where most students struggle. But now here we have these waves in there and play around with these different line weights guys, especially with the hair. Then from here, this is another thing that I talk about in a lot of my portrait classes is I talk about the flow. Look at the reference photo and try to understand how the structure of your subject's face flows and follow that flow with your pencil. Seeing. Just like I'm doing. The flow. Or what some artists will call the underlying form, is something that younger artists tend to overlook. But if you keep it in the back of your mind while you're sketching, that form will show through so long as you are sketching and pulling your pencil in the right direction. All right, moving on to final touches and less than five. 6. Step (5) Finishing Touches | Final Thoughts: Alright, here we go. So now looking at the reference photo, Let's build out this neck. Let's just sketch it out real quick. And just pay attention to the way I pull the pencil across the paper. And pay attention to the amount of times that I will cross hatch in a specific area of the drawing. Longer polls tend to have higher values. Shorter polls tend to have lower values. But if you want to lower the value, all you have to do is hatch over the same area again and again, and that value will lower. Here. I'm just playing with the line weight of the hair. You look at the reference photo, you can see how the hair has almost like a heavier look, right? Well, that's because the lines that we're looking at have a thicker quality and they have a very, very dark wait about them, right? So that's something that we want to make sure that we bring out in our render of the subject. Now notice this, notice that brown line right there. Notice the bottom of the nose line right there. Alright. The bottom of the chin right there. Those are the three equal sections of the front part of the luminous head. And this is one of the reasons why I'm coming out with these videos. I have six more videos that are gonna be just like this, albeit they're going to be different references, but they're going to be the exact same general approach. The whole point is that I want you to understand thoroughly how you can use a luminous head to draw out certain features and have a really nice rendered sketch, right? The cool thing is, the more you do this, the more you draw just like anything, just like working out if you want to get into shape or whatever it is, the more you do it, the better you will become. Muscle memory will become solidified and you won't have to try nearly as hard. Just like this. Yeah, I'm pulling up. This is just a rough sketch for me. But I hope that you're getting some value out of this class and I would absolutely love to see your projects. You have the reference photo here on the class. All you need is some paper. This is literally printer paper that I'm sketching this on. I'm very affordable. And it's just a basic sketch pencil. You can sketch these out in any color you wish. You don't have to sketch it out and green just because I did make sure to leave a review if you did enjoy this class, stay happy, stay healthier. And remember, never stopped drawing.