Learn How to Draw: Features of the Face

1. Introduction: If you're interested in being able to draw faces from imagination, or if you've always wanted to be able to draw realistic eyes, noses, mouths, or ears, then this class is for you. I'm Melissa, a graphic designer and illustrator. Portraiture has always been a little bit of an obsession for me. Over the years, I've learned many different approaches to drawing the features of the human face. In this class, I've distilled each feature down into its most basic shape, creating a formula for you to use when you approach drawing. Each feature is broken up into two separate videos. In the first video, we'll cover a little bit of the anatomy of the feature, and in the second video, we'll dive into drawing what we've learned. Throughout the class, I'll drop my own tips and tricks for adding variety to your drawings, ensuring that you're never stuck drawing the same face over and over. For the class project, you'll be filling up one page per feature. So, grab your sketchbook, crack open Photoshop, or start sketching with Procreate like me. So, by the end of the class, you'll feel comfortable drawing from your imagination. You'll have a better overall understanding of the structure of each feature, which will allow you to draw both accurately and realistically. So, if you have an obsession with faces like me, or if you just want to brush up your skills and learn new tips and tricks, then I'll see you in class. 2. Structure of the Eyes: So we're starting off with some anatomy, the basic structure of the eye. So, I'm just going to sketch out a quick eye here, and then we'll talk about the different pieces that it's comprised of. As I color it in you can see the major pieces that I want to talk about. This black part, it's black circle, it's basically like the darkest part of our eye, is called the pupil, and surrounding the pupil we've got the iris, and this is the piece of the eye that creates the color of our eyes. So, typically, blue, green, hazel, brown, sometimes yellow, and gray, but I think those are a lot more rare. At the top here we have the eye cover fold. So, this is all just like skin that covers up the socket of our eye and it also covers up when the eyelid opens. So, we've got our eye brow and then we've got our upper eyelid. The eye cover fold is covering the upper eyelid when our eyes open. We've got our lower lid, and so, after our lower lid, we've got the sclera, which is the white of our eyeball. You could just call it like the rest of your eyeball if you want. Then you've got the tear duct and the tear bag, and the tear bag becomes more prominent as you age, so, literally when you get bags under your eyes, it's just because the tear bag has always been there, it just becomes more prominent as you age. So, looking at this from a side view, we are going to basically see the same pieces that I just mentioned but at a different angle. What I really want to talk about from the side angle is the actual shape of our eyeball. So, our eyeball, it's around, its a sphere, but it's not a perfect sphere. We've got something called the cornea, and this covers up the pupil and iris area, so it creates this little bump and it's more obvious when you got your eyes closed, it becomes easier to sort of see this little bump kind of shape. So, if you're creating a really realistic rendering of the either eye and this is definitely something that you want to keep in mind, otherwise if you're just drawing like simple doodles or cartoons or more simplified characters, then you don't really have to acknowledge this but it's definitely something that's worth knowing. So, before we move on to drawing the eye symbol shapes, I am just going to talk a little bit about eyelashes. Basically this is what's happening, you got the little hairs that are coming outward and downward and then for the upper lid, you've got the edge, and then you've got the little hairs that are coming outward and upward. The principle is generally the same aware in the center of your eye, the eyelashes are actually facing toward you, so you're going to see less of them because it's harder to see a strand of hair that's directly pointing at you. So, from a front view, the center majors near your eyelid and may be a little bit darker because there's hair there but you won't really see the actual strands themselves. You'll see the strands more on the corner of the eye and near the tear duct. The same goes for the bottom lid, except sometimes the hairs are really curving outward and downward, so, sometimes you can see them a little bit better because they're not pointing directly at you. From the side view, it's really obvious that the eyelashes are there near the front and it becomes less obvious that they're there near the corner of the eye where the eyelashes are facing you a little bit more head on. So, again, I like to indicate it by just darkening the area, but I don't like to overwhelm the eye with a bunch of different eyelashes because I find that it can be really distracting and it tends to look quite unrealistic. But you can add a couple in, because sometimes you have a couple of straight eyelashes that are pointing in directions they shouldn't be pointing in. So, yeah, that's it for eyelashes and next up we're going to talk about how to create eyes using basic shapes. 3. Drawing Eyes: So, to start drawing our eyes, typically what I like to do is I like to start with a general circle, and this indicates the eyeball itself. So, our eyeball is sitting inside of the eye socket of the skull. But it doesn't fit in there perfectly, it's got a fatty tissue surrounding it, and then you've got muscle, and then you've got skin over top that. So, I like to start with the eyeball and I also like to draw in the pupil and the iris, so that I can make sure that they're completely around. Because sometimes I find if you just start drawing the eyelids, and then you draw the iris and the pupil inside, sometimes people tend to make them ovals instead of circles. So, in this structural drawing that I'm using in blue pencil I like to indicate, the eyeball itself, the iris, and the pupil. So, all I'm doing here is I'm just choosing in what direction I want my eye to look up, and then we'll start overlaying black lines, and we'll start adding detail. I start by drawing the actual eyelid shape. So, to keep your drawings looking a little bit more realistic and also to keep them actually more interesting, you don't want to make the top and bottom lid the exact same shape. Because, in reality, they usually aren't. Your eyelid isn't perfectly round, it's usually got a little point in it somewhere. So, you can create variety by moving around these different points. You can see what I'm doing in all of these little sketches here, is that I'm drawing that eyelid shape, but I'm making it pointier on the bottom lid and on the top lid, and I'm changing around where I have that point. So, after I draw in the top lid and the bottom lid, keeping in mind that these eyelids are wrapping around the eyeball. I like to sketch in sometimes just to indicate the tear duct, and then I will pencil in the actual iris and the actual pupil. You can see the blue lines of the iris, so I can be pretty confident that my iris and my pupil are circles, and that I haven't just drawn half circles or ovals. I find when a lot of people start drawing eyes, and they don't draw through to make sure that those two bits are very around, they'll tend to sort of skew them and make them ovals. So anyway, just like in the anatomy drawing that I was doing earlier, you can see there's the ridge of the bottom lid, and I'll just put in some eyelashes. You've got the fold of the upper lid, and I've just put in little markers to indicate the bottom lid, and then the eyebrow itself. Now, moving on to the second drawing, what I'm really trying to emphasize here, is that the eyelids wrap around the eyeball. So, once you have that ball shape, you can wrap those eyelids around, and then you can start filling in the rest of the details. From this angle, you can see a little bit of the ridge of the upper lid. So, I pencil that in and then I've also started to put in some eyelashes. You can see a little bit of the ridge of the lower lid, but not too much. From this angle, still you can see that I've indicated at the bottom lid is still wrapping around the eyeball. Now, I've put in the eyebrow, and I've just shaded a little bit of the back. So, you've got the corner of the eye closest to us, and then on the other side would be the tear duct. But because of the angle that we're at, we wouldn't be able to see the tear duct. I've just shaded in where the bridge of the nose would be. Moving on again, it's always the same process, so because I've already got the eyeballs marked in, and I've already got the direction that the eye is looking in, I'm just drawing over. I put the lids in. I indicate where that eyelid fold is on the upper and lower lid. Sometimes I'll put in a tear bag. But in your drawings, unless you're drawing someone who's older, I would recommend not putting in tear bags. Because as soon as you put those in, if you're painting sometimes it's easier to put those in, because it can be more subtle. But if you're drawing, as soon as you put that line in, it tends to look like an older person or older eyes. So definitely, if you're drawing a young child, or if you're drawing a young woman, or a young man, then you typically don't want to put those in. But I find that people are a lot more forgiving of lines on faces when it comes to drawing men, because it just shows more definition to the face. But when it comes to drawing, "beautiful woman", typically the faces look young and devoid of stray lines, so just be aware that. This I am not really happy with the direction that it was looking in because, I don't know it's just a little bit awkward, it was a little bit too far pointing downwards. So, I've just sort of moved it a little bit and now, I'm going to draw an eye looking downward. So, the curvature of the eyelid still follows that spherical form. But we're sort of looking down work at the eye, so we're at a higher level and we're looking downward at the eye, that's also looking downward. So, the angle, that helps us determine the angle of the eyelids themselves and how they wrap around the eyeball. Got the lower lid, a little bit of the eyebrow. The eyebrow is going to appear to be closer to the eye in this instance, because we're looking downward. When you're looking downward at something, everything seems to squish in closer. You can't really see that eye fold anymore, you just have the brow covering that and the eye fold is underneath. Then you've got some eyelashes. Again, depending on the angle that you're viewing the eye, sometimes the eyelashes will actually completely cover up the iris and the pupil and you can't really see it underneath. For the sake of clarity in my drawings, I usually try to avoid completely covering the eye with eyelashes, because then it becomes difficult for the viewer to see where the characters is looking. But this is something that happens in reality, so that's also something to keep in mind. So, for this example, I'm going to do an eye that's more at a side view like we did, when we were talking about the anatomy of the eye. So, this one's going to look pretty familiar to you. Lastly, I realized that all of these eyes are the same type of eye, so generally, I would say that there are two types of eyes. There's what's called a double lid and then a mono lid. So, a lot of people associate a mono lid as something typical of a person of Asian descent. But this actually isn't completely true, it's not only Asian people that can have this type of mono lid. A mono lid is basically just a different type of eye. Anyone can inherit this type of eye. It's a little bit different, I would say it's just a lot more simplified. So, when you're drawing with line, and you're drawing a mono lid, there basically becomes less for you to define. Because the top and bottom portions tend to be puffier, and so there literally is just less lines for you to draw. Here in this last example, we still got all the same pieces except the fold of the upper lid, has basically disappeared, because it's covered up by the eye fold. So, sometimes the tear duct is also covered up and you won't see the tear duct. Basically, what I've done is I've drawn these little lines to indicate the bottom lid. But typically, you won't even have that, because again, the bottom part will be a little bit more puffy. Like I had mentioned before, talking about subtleties of the drawing or painting the tear bag, when it comes to a mono lid, it's usually easier to paint in details, because you can make them a lot more subtle. But when it comes to drawing and when you're just indicating things with lines. Sometimes it's really easy to overdo it. So, with a mono lid you can be a lot more minimalistic to get the message across. So, that's it for eyes, and next up we're going to move on to the nose. 4. Structure of the Nose: So, now, we are moving into the anatomy of our nose. I used to struggle a lot with drawing noses, and I used to hate them until I actually learned a little bit of the anatomy. I used to hate them because I basically didn't understand how they worked, and I thought that I did. So, I would try to fake it. But now they are absolutely one of my all-time favorite features to draw. I could just draw noses all day. There's so much fun. So, as I'm just rubbing in this sketch. I'll color it in and then I'll start talking about the different puzzle pieces that the nose is comprised of. So, we've got these two green areas that I'm filling in. Both of these areas are cartilage. So, you've got your nasal bone which I'm going to fill in with yellow. You've got the wing of the nose which right now I'm filling in with blue. Then you've got the cartilage. So, I've colored them different types of green because they're both cartilage but there are also separate from each other and they join together. So, like I mentioned, this kind of a puzzle piece effect is is happening. The light green piece of cartilage is a lot more rigid than the dark green and you can actually feel that on your nose. You can feel the nasal bone that has absolutely no give, not flexible at all, and then as you move further down your nose, you can start to feel that it gets quite flexible. The tip of your nose where that green area of cartilages is, is quite flexible. Then you've got your wing, the wing of your nose which is that blue area which is absolutely 100 percent, do whatever you want, it's totally flexible. You can punch it, squish it, whatever, and it'll move. So, right here, I've pointed out with an arrow. You've got where your cartilage, I would say where your nose joins up to your skull. So, you've definitely seen a skull before. If not, I've got the reference images attached. Basically when all of the muscle and flesh is stripped away, your skull has no nose. That's because the nose is completely made of cartilage bits and fatty tissue. So, right here, that area that I pointed out with the arrow is where your nose actually joins up to the skull. I've colored in this little black hole on the side of your nose. It's good to know that there are other little bits of cartilage that are in there but I've just decided not to draw them in because it really isn't important to know that they basically look like little pebbles that fill in that space, they've all got their own complicated Latin names. But just know that that black little triangle actually does have more pieces in it but for the sake of our learning, it does not matter at all. So, I've just fill that in with black. Then the other little black spot that I've got going on is the nostril which, I think everybody knows what an nostril is. So, something that's pretty important that I want to talk about is that from the side view of your nose, you can still see the nostrils. I think a lot of people tend to think that the nose is basically a pyramid and it's flat on the bottom, so if you pluck the nose off of your skull and you put it on a table, I think a lot of people make the assumption that it would stand up straight, but it actually wouldn't. In this tiny little diagram that I've drawn, you can see that I've got these two hard diagonal black lines and has to indicate the planes. So, our nose is pointed out the bottom, and so where our nostrils sit, they're actually facing upward and outward. They're not facing parallel to the ground. So, from a side view, you will see some of the nostril. That's because of the plane change there. It's not completely flat. So, moving on to the front view of the nose now. I'm going to draw the same pieces in at a different view. So, here you can see the dark green cartilage area that I was talking about is actually comprised of two of these little bean shapes. Right here where I'm pointing at with the arrow is like where the bean shapes intersect. On some people that little indentation, I call the butt of the nose because it looks like a little bum. But on some people, it's more obvious, and on other people, it's completely rounded out so you don't see that indentation. But again, it's just something else to keep in mind that for some reason if you want to add it in, you can. It's just another way to vary your drawings and change up the kind of noses that you draw, just full details. For this front view, I'm going to give you the Latin names, just because why not? Might as well learn it as we're here. This dark green area that's semi-squishy is called the greater alar cartilage. Then on top of that, you've got the lateral cartilage. Then on top of that, you've got the nasal bone and right here, you've got what's called the root of the nose. So, that's basically kind of where your nose actually begins to come off of your face, and usually from that point that's where the bridge of your nose starts. Some people have a really pronounced bridge. So, people have a really pronounced root of their nose. Some people don't, it's kind of flat. So, it just depends on the individual. Yes, so there you have the side view and the front view of the nose, and next up we're going to move on to drawing the nose with basic shapes. 5. Drawing Noses: Nose shapes. So, really, really basically, we've got a triangle for a nose. The triangle is- it's a right-angle triangle. There you go. That's what it's called. It's a right-angle triangle where it'll be flat on the side that it connects to our face, and then slanted to create the bridge of the nose. Basically, you can take the shape and you can turn it into a three-dimensional shape. This will give us a good structure to start with to draw the nose. So I'm just drawing this triangular shape at a bunch of different angles. Then, I'll start putting details on top. One of the reasons why we use this really basic shape is because it's so easy to draw from different angles. It really helps to draw through the shape so to pretend that it is clear. You would draw the other side of it and this helps you understand where it attaches, where the other nostril would be even if you don't see it. One of the ways to create variety in the shapes of your nose, is to play around with that bridge area and with the base. For example, you can tuck in that root area and make it really narrow and then widen the base of your nose. That'll give you a skinny nose at the top and a really wide certain nose at the bottom. You can play around with the proportions of your triangle or your pyramid and that'll give you these different variations. Now, that we have all of our blue triangle sketched in, we can begin to decorate them. To figure out where the nostrils are going to go, I draw a triangle, an equilateral triangle on the bottom plane of the nose. The way to draw this triangle would be to take points from the corner and draw yourself diagonal lines that meet at the center of the line that's parallel, just like I've done here. Then, what always helps me is drawing in, roughing in that greater alar cartilage area, that flexible green area that we talked about before to figure out where the corner of my nose will be. It's actually that cartilage area that can change drastically from individual to individual. It can be extremely pointy. It can be extremely round. There are tons of different variations of sizes and shapes that this piece of cartilage can take on. That's our first nose. We can move on to doing the second one. First, again, starting off with figuring out where the nostrils go. Then from there, it's pretty easy to mark in the wings of the nose. Then for this one, I'm extending, I'm not just following along with the structure that I've made, I'm extending the greater alar cartilage area outward because I want it to be a little bit more pointy and I want it to point a little bit upward. This little line that I've drawn that extends from the nostril is hinting at the filtering which we'll get into when I talk about mouths. But basically, it's where our nose will start to connect to our mouth area. Like I mentioned before, when I was talking about the anatomy, we've got those two planes that our nose isn't just flat on the bottom. But the shapes that we're using are flat on the bottom. So this is where it gets a little bit tricky. That line for the filtering that I've indicated is hinting at the fact that there is flesh right down the center of the nose. It just helps give it a little bit more form and helps define that plane change a little bit that happens. Be aware that the plane change is there. You can indicate it in your drawings if you want to like sometimes I indicate it by drawing that filter in and sometimes I don't really indicate that plane change too much. Anyway, moving on, we'll do the side view of the nose now which we already covered in anatomy. So this is going to look really familiar but let's draw it again here. So I've put in the nostril. Actually, I just decided to place the nostril wherever I like it. So that's also something that you can play around with is just wing it. Sorry. Oh God, I can't focus now. Just play around with putting the nostrils wherever you want to, changing the size and shape of the greater alar cartilage area. You can make that the point to where the cartilage meets the bridge of the nose, that's usually where people have a bump in their nose, so you can really exaggerate that or you can flatten it out. But basically, because you know all the basic shapes and because you know how a nose is puzzled together, like what pieces it's comprised over, you can just start playing around with those different shapes and see what you get. This is a great way to make mistakes. It's a great way to learn what doesn't work. So sometimes when you're drawing you might put a nostril in a really weird place and that's perfect for figuring out what doesn't work in a drawing. So then you would know, "Okay, well, I can't put nostrils there." But sometimes you might put a nostril in a very strange place and realize that it still communicates as a nose or as a different type of nose, like a very strange nose. It definitely works. It's worth it to explore and make mistakes and try different things. Yes, I just encourage you to play around with the different shapes. Moving on to the next one here, it's like you're looking down on the nose. You definitely wouldn't see the nostrils here. You can see I've drawn them in anyway. I've ghosted them in so that I know where they are and I understand where the wings of the nose have to go. So as you're learning I encourage you to draw through and place your nostrils because placing your nostrils really helps figure out where the center of your nose is and where the wings of the nose have to go. Next up, we've got the funny shape that I played around with. I'm going to do my best to make a nose out of this. I've created these little triangular nostrils. Nostrils come in all sorts of different shapes. Sometimes they're circles. Sometimes they're triangles. Sometimes they are these little mean shapes. So that's also another thing that you can play around with is, honestly, just the shape above the nostril. Some people have really big nostrils and some people have really small nostrils. Again, that's up to you. I've decided for this nose, I want to try to make it really round. So I'm going to use these really round wings and this really round alar cartilage area and just make a nice big wide nose. Then again, I've indicated the root of the nose. From that root area, if you continue going upward and outward, that's where it would meet the brows, and your eyes will be on either side of that nose. So, what I'm indicating on the sides are basically we've got that front plane, that would catch a lot of light. Then, we've got the two planes that are angled and sloping outward and downward, and those two planes on the side would turn into the cheeks. So, I've drawn some little lines to indicate that the nose is connected, and it will turn into cheek. You can see that in the top right example as well, the little wispy lines that I've drawn to indicate where the nose would connect to the face and then where the cheek was round out. So, for this last example, I've done a really strange view of it, but basically it's backwards. So, all of the lines that I've just colored in here are to indicate that, this is where the nose is going to stick to the face. So, basically we're drawing a backwards nose and again, I'm going to put in my nostrils and that helps me figure out where the wings of my nose needs to go. Then, I've got the greater our cartilage area, and I'm still following along the structure that I created in blue. I think honestly that's basically it for the last example, because it's such a strange view. Yeah. So, there you have it a page of noses. So, if we take the blue lines away, we can see what we've drawn, and these are the shapes that we started with. So, now I'm going to show you my favorite method of drawing noses. This is mostly, if you're looking at a nose head-on. So, one of the reasons why I like drawing notice so much is, because you can use any basic shape and you really can't go wrong. Once you know where the nostrils should go and where the wings of the nose will go, then you can really use any shape that you want. So, basically what these shapes represent, are the bottom of the nose area. So, you can see in the first example that I'm drawing. After I've indicated where the nozzles go, I follow the shape that I've made in blue to figure out, where the winds of the nose will go, so how those winds are going to look, and how they're going to wrap around the nostril. Then, I indicate that greater Allard cartilage area, and then the root of the nose or the bridge of the nose. In the second example, this different shape gives me a different nose, and this is why I like using this method to create variety in my noses or because I really don't want to get stuck, and I really don't want you to get stuck drawing the same nose over and over again. I want to give you enough of a formula that you understand how to draw a nose, but I don't want you to give a formula that you're going to use over and over again to get the same result every time. So, we want to create variety in our noses, for the characters that we're going to draw. So, here you can see now in the third example, I've used the dreaded oval, but the oval gives me this rounded nose and these rounded wings. So, again a different variation. The only thing that I'm changing here is just that basic blue shape that I've used, and from there I just follow along. So. Yeah. The steps that I tend to take our shape first, then I add in the nostrils, then I draw on the wings, and then I Ruff in, where I want the greater our cartilage area to be and then the bridge of the nose. So, something that I like to do to indicate that, it's a noses that I usually just like to shade the bottom plane. On the second or first example I'm just shading in that bottom plane. So, like on the second example, if you take away that line that I drew to indicate the cartilage area, it would still communicate as being a nose, a 3-dimensional nose. So, on all of these examples, I'm just going to shade in that bottom plane. So, when I take a line drawings away, you can see the different shapes that those planes make. I think the most common shadow shape for the bottom of the nose would have to be the last one that I've done, and it's like this little heart shape. But. Yeah. Just in general, I find when I'm drawing from reference or when I'm looking at other people's digital paintings, usually this is the most common shape that I see is that heart-shaped. Even the rest of the examples that I've done here, have that same shape. The first one is really flattened out, but the second, third, and fourth example, they have that little V-shape at the top that makes it look like a heart. Now from a side view basically, I find that there are usually only two shapes, that you can use which is that oval shape or a triangular shape. I typically make the noses pointing upward, but that isn't always the case. Some people have noses that point more downward, or in a lot of cartoons or comics you might just have somebody whose knows just overhangs their mouth in general. But generally, I find that the nose points a little bit upwards in reality, so I like to use these basic shapes. Then, I'm just following along with what we learned in the structure and anatomy piece of the video, I draw the nostril in first, the wing, and just follow that shape for the outer cartilage area. Remember that, where the cartilage meets the nasal bone, for some people it can be really pronounced and so you'll get a little bump in the bridge of the nose. You can always emphasize that if you want, or you can ignore it. But I find usually most people have a little indication of that point where the two meet. So, now that we're done, here we have another page of noses. Mostly from the front view a little bit from the side, you can try using different shapes to do maybe like three-quarter view. For three-quarter views, I usually use the pyramid method just, so I don't mess it up. But. Yeah. That's basically it for noses and now, we're going to be moving on to the mouth. 6. Structure of the Mouth: All right. So, I'm just starting off by a roughing in the mouth region. Most people tend to think of the mouth as being just the lips, but this isn't the case. The entire mouth region, actually it starts right below your nose, and ends right at the start of your chin, and then it's surrounded on either side by the cheeks. So, right off the bat I started by defining the corners of the mouth, and then I started trying in the basic shapes of the upper lip. Our upper lip is comprised of three basic shapes, you got two teardrops on either side, and a circle called the tubercle in the middle. The teardrop shapes on both the upper and lower lip are actually the underlying muscle, whereas the tubercle itself is made of tissue. So it's not made of any muscle at all. So, as I continue to draw I'm defining the corners of the lips as well as the bottom of the tubercle and that's because these tend to be landmarks for me when drawing the mouth. They're usually quite evident, quite obvious, all of the areas that I'm drawing in right now, typically will be sort of shadow areas. So, if you're painting or if you're actually shading your drawings in, the center line where the top and bottom lip meet as well as the corners of the mouth, there's usually some shadow there. Moving on to our bottom lip for now, we've just got to larger versions of the tear drop shapes that we drew on our upper lip. So, I've also added a line and a bit of shadow underneath where these two shapes meat, to indicate a shadow. So, something else that's pretty important to note, is that the plane change from our actual lip to the skin right underneath. The only reason you can see the difference there is because of that reddish color that comes from the capillaries being closer to the skin. So, you got lots of tiny little blood vessels that are close to the surface of the skin right around your lips which is why they're usually that sort of pinky color. The plane itself there's not a drastic change from your bottom lip to the skin around it. It can be smoothed out and depending on the individual there might be more of a plane change or there might be less of a plane change, but this is one of the reasons why I don't typically define the bottom of the lip with just a hard line, but I will define it right at that center point where there's a little bit of shadow because that's where your lip sticks out the farthest and that's where it's going to catch some shadow. So, next this little like a hillshade that I'm just sort of sketching in, it looks like it's the chin, but I'm actually not drawing the chin. What I'm drawing is called the Pillars of the Mouth, and that's these sort of two big areas to the left and right, right underneath your mouth. These pillars, they're like these two columns shapes that extend from the base of your bottom lip, outward, and downward. These pillars are what separates your lips from your chin. Jumping back to the upper lip, we've got what's called the philtrum. So, where the philtrum meets the tubercle you've got this sort of V-shape this sort of little indent, and it mirrors the bottom of the tubercle that I've drawn, that same sort of shape. In this drawing, I'm defining the upper lip with darker lines more than the bottom lip, because the upper lip tends to be a downward facing plane which means that assuming that our light is coming from something like the sun or just coming from above us. Our upper lip isn't going to catch as much of that light as the bottom lip, because our upper lip is facing downward. So, generally I find in art It's more acceptable to define the upper lip, than it is to really define the bottom one. So, if you draw a hard line around both lips, both the upper and the lower I find that this really tends to make it look flat, and just generally weird because it's not true to nature since we don't have these hard lines surrounding our lips. So, now I'm jumping to the corner of our mouths. At the corner of our mouths, we have these little sort of circular muscles called the Nodes and these are responsible for pulling our mouth in every direction. So, each one can move sort of on its own and can push and pull your lip from the corner. You got other muscles underneath that are also responsible for pulling other areas of your lip up and down, but that tends to get really complicated and I'm just going over a really simple version of the mouth for you to learn from. So, I just drew a little bit way too large, and I can't fit the image and so I'm just going to shrink it quickly and move it over to the left and now I'll just start labeling it for you. So, quickly we've got the philtrum, which is that sort of indent coming from your nose to the tubercle. You've got the nodes, on the sides of the corners of your mouth, and then you've got your lower lip and you've got your upper lip and then right here from the top of the wings of your nose, and to just about the corner of your mouth, you've got what's called the nasal labial furrow. So, that's what's actually separating our cheek from our mouth. You can especially see these lines in older people, or if someone is snarling, or if they're really angry, and they're sort of scrunching up their face these lines the nasal labial furrow becomes really obvious. Let's not forget the pillars of the mouth. So, you've got one on the right side, and one on the left side. Just for clarity we've got our chin and our nose. So, quickly I'm just going to color these in different colors to really separate out the different areas that I'm talking about just for clarity sake. Then we'll jump into the side view of the mouth. Alright. So, to start drawing the side view of the mouse, I'm just going to draw a diagonal line, and this is just to help me keep my angles uniform, and right away I've already defined the corner of the mouth and I've quickly dropped in the rough outlines for the lips and the pillar of the mouth. Like I said earlier, the corners of the mouth and that little V-shape that the tubercle creates, these are really landmarks of the mouth, so I tend to drop those in immediately just by habit. From the side view we get to practice trying the side of our nose, like we learned earlier. So, we'll just drop that in, and then I'll start to define the edges of the philtrum and the upper lip, and then we've got that center line a little furrow. Typically, you wouldn't really indicate the furrow on a female character unless she's older. I just find that as soon as you add that in, it tends to make somebody look aged, or angry, and if you're trying to draw a young woman or a child, I typically want to leave something like that out. From the side view I find as I'm coloring this in, sometimes it's difficult to see the philtrum. I think again this is something that depends on the individual. Some people have philtrums that are very wide near the base, and so from a side view, there's like wide and shallow. So, from a side view you can see a hint of it, but some people you wouldn't be able to see it really at all, because it is an indentation. In the side view it's actually just easier to explain the downward and upward planes, so I'll just quickly cover that. You can see that the bottom of our nose, the upper lip just below the lower lip and the bottom of the chin. These are all blue,downward facing planes which means that they aren't going to catch as much sunlight. Again assuming that the sunlight is coming from the top, and the ones in yellow are upward facing, and these are generally going to catch more light. So,this helps when you're shading or if you're painting. We're almost done with the mouth here, I just have a last little bit that I want to go over I almost forgot. I want to talk about how the mouth opens and shuts. So, it's really important to understand the mechanics of our mouth to be able to draw it properly and to be able to draw it accurately. A lot of times people when drawing they ignore the jaw, and just draw the mouth open and instead of having the drawn in a hinge mechanism like it actually is, they tend to just drop the jaw open which really creates a very distorted figure and it's not really true to life. So, like I mentioned our jaw opens and closes on this hinge mechanism, and so you've got this like it'll just go up and down, and I'm really sorry for those poor animation, I forgot the bottom of the teeth. I'll just draw then. So, it just opens and closes just like this. So, that little spot that I've colored in there in blue is the little hinge and our jaw rotates off of that point. In this view you can really start to understand, that the lips they wrap around the teeth and all of our features wrap around the skull. So, from here you can see the closed mouth, and actually I should have drawn the lips a little bit higher because the central line of our mouth just falls midway on our upper teeth, on our set of upper teeth. Anyway, let's just skip ahead to drawing with an open mouth. So, as you can see here the jaws sort of pushed back in space and so are the teeth. That bottom part of our mouth doesn't just drop down to open up and if we're opening our mouth and we're still rather relaxed. So, if we're talking, our bottom lip is actually still going to cover up those bottom teeth. The bottom teeth don't show, unless you are intentionally pulling back the bottom lip. If you're like really exaggerating an expression, I suppose maybe if you're really angry. That's the only time that the bottom lip will actually pull back in, and you'll see those bottom teeth. Otherwise is just the top teeth that you see that are exposed. Anyway, so, now that we've covered a little bit of the structure of the mouth, we can move on to some drawings. 7. Drawing Mouths: So to start drawing lips, I begin with this trapezoid shape, one trapezoid for the top lip and an upside-down one for the bottom lip. So basically, we're just drawing a rectangle where the top is shorter than the bottom, the bottom is longer, so you're going to have these diagonal sides, as you can see. So, the side view is a little bit more tricky, but it's still our trapezoid shape, it just tends to look like little triangles. In general, I'm avoiding ovals here because they just don't give me enough form, and I tend around everything out and I'm just not the biggest fan of ovals, it doesn't mean that you can't use ovals, but I tend to avoid them. With our trapezoid shapes you can play around with the proportions of the basic shape that we've created and you can make the top one bigger, you can make it smaller, you can squish it, you can make them longer, you can do whatever you want and that will basically just add variation to the kinds of loops that you're drawing. Right off the bat I went straight for defining the tubercle and the corners of the mouth. This is habit for me, but if you're having trouble deciding where the tubercle goes or where the corners of the mouth should go, then you can always start with the basic tear drop shapes and that little circle for the tubercle right in the center. Putting the tear drop shapes in the bottom portion of the lips really helps figure out where the shadows will go. Usually, that central line of the lip, there's a little bit of shadow that's cast from the tubercle onto the bottom lip and there's usually these little triangles beside the tubercle of shadow that's formed from the tear drop shapes touching that circle shape. So I've added in a bit of shadow, I've added in the lower part of the lip and then define those pillars of the mouth, a quick line to indicate the chin and then I've defined the upper lip and the philtrum. Because we already learned noses I encourage you to just draw on the nose anyway, you don't have to if you just want to practice mouth but it's just good practice anyway, good habit. So, there we have our first mouth and we will move on to the second one which is going to be more of a side view just like the diagram that we were drawing earlier. So, both of these will look very familiar to you because they're basically what we just covered now. But now we're not really too much interested in defining the law the anatomy, we're just trying to figure out those basic shapes and sketch them in for ourselves. So again, I've made both the top and bottom lip pretty even both in size and how far they stick out from the face, but if you want you can always play around with those sorts of proportions. You can also change the length of the philtrum, that'll also help create variation in your drawings. You can also play around with how big those pillars of the mouth, how long they are, basically, since now all the different shapes and different puzzle pieces that the mouth is comprised of, you can play around with any of those proportions and they'll give you a different outcome. So, now I'm drawing another mouth from a slightly different angle, I guess this would be like a three-quarter view. Here the tubercle is very defined on one side more so on the other. Our bottom lip also has a little curve because our bottom lip is a really rounded form and it's not flat. So, from this angle I've chosen to really indicate those two things because it just helps the viewer understand the direction that our lip is facing. So from a straight on view, our tubercle will sort of like that little V-shape that the tubercle creates on the center line is pretty even, but as soon as the lip starts to turn in space it becomes more defined on one side than the other. So next up, I want to define the shape here, and make these lips really pointy. Sometimes where the philtrum meets the tubercle you're going to have a really defined V-shape, but for fuller lips sometimes there is no V-shape at all, sometimes it really just rounds out. From this angle, you're going to see a bit of the pillar of the mouth supporting the bottom lip and that's probably something that I'll help you remember how the mouth and chin are connected is that, you've got the chin and then sitting on top of the chin you've got these two pillars that are helping to hold up the bottom lip. Maybe that helps you, hopefully it does, but that's how I like to think of it. So, you can see in the side view the pillar is connected to the bottom lip and that area would be shaded or it would be in shadow. So now we'll do lips from a bit of a downward perspective, and again, because we aren't looking straight on the tubercle is going to be defined more on one side. So, the line that we use to draw the pillars are closer to the bottom lip because the pillars of the mouth are underneath the bottom lip. From a downward perspective, everything is going to appear to be a little bit squished, so the nose is going to hang over that philtrum a little bit and then the lip is going to hang over the pillars of the mouth a little bit, so everything just looks a little bit more squished together. Again, I always recommend drawing from reference. For this last mouth here I'm going to use some reference and draw from that. Drawing from reference will just generally help you understand how the features turn in space. It also really helps you create variety in your work by actually looking at reference because sometimes you don't even think that it's possible to draw a mouth a certain way until you see it in a photo and realize, "Wow, the lips can look like that, or the chin can look like that or this person has really strange proportions, not in a bad way, but just in a way that you never thought of before." So, it's really important to either draw from life or draw from reference. So as I'm drawing this last example, there's a little point that I want to make. So I'm drawing from reference, and typically, people tend to draw full lips on woman and not really add any definition of fullness to lips for their male characters. This definitely isn't true to life because, well, many men also have full lips and it's totally okay to draw them that way, I just find that a lot of people tend not to. The reference photo that I'm using is actually of man. So, the point that I want to make is that features don't have gender. Your lips aren't masculine and they're not feminine. A full lip is just a full-lip, a narrow lip is just a narrow lip, and so, it's not until you start adding details around it whether that's facial hair or a stronger jawline or higher cheekbones it's not until everything comes together that your character really starts to look like a man or a woman. So, don't be afraid to try full lips on men or really narrow tiny lips on woman, don't be afraid to just play around and draw something that typically is considered for men or for women. When it comes to this last one, I think I definitely could have done a better job on the facial hair, but I just really quickly wanted to get it in there so just to give you the idea that, when I first started drawing it maybe people were like, "Oh, that's a feminine mouth." Because the lips were so full, but as soon as you start putting in the rest of the detail, it's not even a question anymore, it's just like, "Okay that's probably a man." There we have it, we've got a sheet of different mouths and different views. 8. Structure of the Ears: Let's talk about the purpose of the ear. So, the ear's purpose is to act as a funnel for sound so the sound can travel around your ear and into the ear hole, and that way your brain can process what's actually going on around you. So, in short, the ear is a funnel. I think that's why sometimes you'll see people will draw a simplified or cartoon ears sometimes there'll even be a little swirl in there or even just a couple lines. You can see on the right side, I made all these little strokes. That's where your ear's actually going to attach to your face, everything else is off of your head. Now, I'm just going to color it in, and we'll talk about the different areas. A lot of these different forms are melting into each other, they're fusing together. I've drawn lines to indicate where the form changes, but it's really, it's like hills and valleys in your ear, there's no definitive hard edge. So, the first part here we've got the helix, which is creating this c-shape. What's important to know about the helix is that it can really vary from individual to individual. All of these forms can vary but definitely, I've seen the helix sometimes it's really pronounced, and by pronounce I mean thick. Let me quot the antihelix which creates that y-shape, that purple y-shape, and that is going to tucked neatly underneath the helix and wraparound into that like blue and red area. We've got the concha, which I like to call bowl, that just helps me remember and understand what it is, and so, this whole red area, the concha, this is where your ear actually attaches to the side of your head. So, I mentioned earlier that your ear is attaching where I made all those little gray strokes, your ear's attaching to your skin. Well, it also attaches to the side of your head, it is attached by the concha. You've got the tragus which is this sideways m-shape, and the tragus is basically that little depression there, the two points in the depression, but I've colored this whole green area as the tragus. You've got the antitragus is here right by the lobe. Basically, if you took the antitragus, it's got this sideways v-shape and can, if you were to fold them together tucks neatly into the tragus. So, they're like little puzzle pieces, and we got the ear lobe. So, I think everybody basically knows what an ear lobe is, it's made of fatty tissue and skin. The rest of your ear is made of cartilage and skin, but there's no muscle. The earlobe can definitely vary between individuals in size and shape. On some people, it's basically nonexistent. They can't even really get their ears pierced because there's not really any lobe there. On other people, giant earlobes, and you can definitely get a few earrings in there. So, let's talk about these little two gray areas last. So, first we've got the fossa triangularis, that's what it's called, and all you have to do is remember that it's a triangle, never mind anything else, it's a triangle. Then you've got the scapha on the other side. So, these two, like I mentioned earlier, there's no hard division. It's really difficult to know where this start and where they end because the antihelix dips down and creates the fossa triangularis and then on the other side the antihelix dips down and creates the scaffold and you can feel that and you can see that on your own ear. Let's move on to this side view of the year because something interesting happens once we get into the side view, and it's easier to describe the antihelix from the side view. So, once again I'm starting with that basic shape, and from the side view, the ear is the same basic shape that I used earlier except it's a little bit squished. Sorry, this is the side view and not the front view. So, we're talking about the front view of the ear, sorry about that, and from the front view, you can definitely see that the antihelix comes out and at some points comes out further than the helix, so it'll actually cover up the helix and the helix is behind it, and then you've got those two little depression areas, the triangularis and the scapha. From the front view, still the same where that whole green area is the part that attaches to your face. Sometimes, I think I forgot to mention this with ear lobes. Some individuals their ear lobes are also attached, so they're attached to the jaw line, but in most cases they are separate. We will also talk about the back view of the ear, which is actually quite boring, there's not really that much going on in this view. You're just going to see the back side of basically the concha and the helix, the lobe and, I guess the backside of the fossa triangularis and the scapha. So, I'll add these colors in so for quick reference, you can understand which pieces you're seeing, but it's all just the backside. The top part where you've got the purple and the gray, that's dips into space, so it's further back than the concha. So, if you were to shade it, you would make that area darker. That's it for anatomy, let's move forward to basic shapes. 9. Drawing Ears: Starting off with these basic blue shapes, I like to do a rectangle with a sort of slanted bottom. I really don't like using ovals to draw ears because I think you rob yourself of a lot of opportunities to create interesting little shapes because ears aren't just round, they've got some points. The ear lobe is typically really round, can be really round but the top of the ear sometimes can be really pointy, or there are just lots of different angles that you can create with ears that keep them a lot more interesting, and in my opinion realistic. So, I typically avoid using ovals. Also typically, your ear is wider at the top and narrower at the bottom, so that's one of the reasons why we're using that sloped line. So, I'll just go ahead and start drawing all of our little details in that we learned earlier. So, like I said before, I really like to simplify ears. The major points to keep in would be the tragus of the fossa triangularis and the concha anti-tragus dip and the helix. I find with the anti-helix, remember that purple area in our diagram earlier, you don't even really need to draw that in. Most people can tell that it's an ear. Basically, if you draw the tragus and the helix like I'm doing here, everything else that you add in, is just icing on the cake. You only really need a couple lines to define the ear and for the most part everyone can tell that it's an ear, especially when it's attached to a head. No one's going to assume that it's something else. So, remember that you can play around with the different shapes of the ear lobes. You can make really big ear lobes, you can make really small ones. You can play around with the thicknesses of the helix, make it really thin or really thick and folded. Honestly, I think that everyone should draw ears. I think they're just really meditative. They're just really zen, it's really easy to just doodle ears, because they're just really a bunch of really, really basic shapes and you can't really mess it up because I find a lot of people don't, it's not that they don't know the anatomy of the ear, but a lot of people just don't really pay attention to it. So, they see a couple lines and they just go, okay, that's an ear. So, it's really difficult to go wrong when you're drawing ears. So, I would say when you're practicing, just keep your anatomy sheet close and really just play around with those major shapes that I talked about before. Play around with the ear lobe, play around with the triangularis, make it small, make it wide, make it skinny, make it pointy. With the ear shape, you can do, honestly, whatever you want. Just remember that at some point your ear has to attach to the side of your head, so keep it open on one end and you can add earrings to them, you can add different piercings, you can really just have fun. Don't be afraid to make a mistakes. Oh, I forgot. I didn't really draw any side views. Sorry, I didn't really draw any front views of the ear. So, I'm just going to do that now actually. We'll just do it in black, that's fine. So, like I said before, it's the same. The shapes that we use for the side and the front view are basically the same. The only difference is that your front view is going to be a little bit more squished together, a little bit more narrow, but basically, you'll be able to see all of the same shapes. We'll just do another little one here facing the opposite direction. I can even just go ahead and add in some sideburns and a little bit hair, little scribbly hair, add a little jaw line. Now, there you go, and you're done. So, I'll just move on to the last ear. I'm really trying to think of different points that I can talk about with ears, but I think we've covered it. It's really quite simple so, just enjoy yourself. As with any other feature, if you're really having trouble drawing it from your imagination, don't worry, it takes practice, go take a look at reference photos. Like I mentioned before as well, I'm going to keep saying this, use reference photos because lots of different features are so different in ways that you wouldn't even be able to imagine. It's only by looking at different photos and looking at different types of features on people that you can really get a sense of how drastically different they are. So, don't always draw from your imagination, try to draw from reference just to expand that visual library. So, let's just wrap up this last ear, and there you have it. We're done with ears. 10. Recap and Conclusion: All right. So, let's recap. By now, we've learned the anatomy of the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, and we've also practiced drawing these different features from several different angles both from our imagination and from reference. So, from this point onward, I recommend that you continue your own studies by drawing preferably from life but also from reference, and if you're about to start your class project, then don't forget that I've included materials for you to use. Some photos, photos of a skull, right here, as well as some links where you can find stock imagery, free stock imagery, for you to reference, and finally, some practice sheets. So, I hope that you've learned something new, and I hope that you've had a great time, and that's it for us. So, I guess I'll see you next time. Bye, bye.