Let’s Doodle Faces: Beginner’s Guide to Using Simple Lines to Draw Cartoon Faces | Stacy Mitchell | Skillshare
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Let’s Doodle Faces: Beginner’s Guide to Using Simple Lines to Draw Cartoon Faces

teacher avatar Stacy Mitchell, Artist, Author, Entrepreneur

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.

      Doodle Faces Intro

      0:41

    • 2.

      Doodle Faces Project

      0:55

    • 3.

      Doodle Faces Basic Lines

      2:28

    • 4.

      Doodle Faces Basic Shapes

      4:25

    • 5.

      Doodle Faces Face Anatomy

      2:18

    • 6.

      Doodle Faces Parts

      8:29

    • 7.

      Doodle Faces Put Together

      10:18

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About This Class

In this class we’ll take the lines and shapes from letters and numbers to create whimsical cartoon faces. This class is perfect for beginner artists and those doodlers who feel they “can’t draw faces.”

Use your doodling skills as a starting point in character design. All that is needed is a pencil and paper!

Meet Your Teacher

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Stacy Mitchell

Artist, Author, Entrepreneur

Teacher

Hi! I'm Stacy Kenny Mitchell, artist, author, and entrepreneur. A life-long artist and crafter, I create patterns and designs for embroidery, fabric, home goods, and accessories. I love to help other crafters learn new skills.

I love to create stuff in a variety of ways: painting, drawing, knitting, quilting, embroidery... you get the picture! You can read about my deep-rooted need to create on my blog. 

As much as I love to create, I also enjoy teaching and helping others to tap into their creativity - hence my classes here on Skillshare! I also teach at my local community college, as well as offer workshops on a variety of topics for companies and organizations. 

Like the scarf I'm wearing? You can learn to make that in my Kni... See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Doodle Faces Intro: Hi, I'm Stacy. Kenny Mitchell. Welcome to Let's Doodle Faces in this class will take the lines and shapes from letters and numbers to create whimsical cartoon faces. This class is perfect for beginner artist, and those do dealers who feel they can't draw faces. Use your doodling skills as a starting point in character design. All that is needed is a pencil and paper ready to get started. Let's go. 2. Doodle Faces Project: the project for this class will be to do a sheet of doodled faces, and I've created this nine grid so that you can play around and create a variety of different doodles. For this exercise, you can use pen, pencil, and plain paper is fine. You could even use markers, crayons, whatever writing implement that you have. It's perfectly okay. Throughout these lessons, I've used a Sharpie so that you can see the details much more clearly. But a pencil and paper were perfectly fine, so let's get started and learning how you can doodle faces. 3. Doodle Faces Basic Lines: doodling is good for your brain, and it's simple to dio. Mindless squiggles on the margins of your paper can help relax and even reenergize are busy . Brains in this lesson will take simple lines once we use every day in writing and practice , creating those lines and shapes in a loose and relaxed manner. So first up, we're going to start with some straight lines. Yep, just like writing the number one. If you do a series of these across the page and you can do small ones, figure ones close together further apart. It doesn't really matter. You just want to make sure that your hand is comfortable making a straight ish line, and you don't need to worry whether or not the Linus perfectly straight. It's just a line. Now let's make a purposefully curved line like a parenthesis e so you can dio an opening or closing parentheses. E and again, you can practice those. You could make little ones go with the other direction. You could make bigger ones, but then, and they could be very curvy or barely hurt the at all. Now let's take another curved line that we're all familiar with and that is an S. So could be a very open s. Or it can be a very Kirby closed s. But again, just get your hand loose and creating these lines. And now practice doing several of them. Mix it up a little bit in our next lesson, will practice making some basic shapes. 4. Doodle Faces Basic Shapes: in this lesson. We're going to take simple shapes again, ones that you use every day in writing, and we're gonna practice creating these shapes in a loose and relaxed manner. Let's start with a circle, and if you've already been doodling faces before, you probably have a bunch of, ah, circle skills under your belt. And don't worry if your circle isn't perfect, it might be more oval shaped. It might loop around a little bit like that, and that's fine. You just want to create circles. Big ones, squishy ones, little ones. We'll use circles quite a. But when we're making our doodled faces now, when you're comfortable with circles, we can move on to another shape, and that is the square. Now it doesn't matter if you start with two parallel lines and then close them off, or if you go around and the perimeter of the square which ever way you want to dio. Also, it doesn't matter if you're square is not square but is rather rectangular. That is fine, too. The idea is just to get a box of your form, then you're circle. Now. These are the only shapes that will be using in creating our doodle faces. There are lots of other numbers and letters that come into play when creating doodled faces . For instance, the number five. You'll be surprised at how this becomes a nose and eyebrows very easily, but that's just a sneak peek of what's coming up. So we already used a line for the number one, but you could also practice your number twos and threes. Oh, threes are great because they have nice curves. And there we've already talked about five, uh, eight is great, especially on the side, but you can practice your eight upgrade as well. Also is two circles. I didn't forget the numbers in between four and 67 and nine, and you can practice those as well. But there are also some letters that are pretty fun to dio. A Capital B done on its side also could become eyes. The letter C makes a good nose also could be kind of I barrels de, as you've probably used when typing out an emoji can be a smile. Jay's also make good noses. So does an l weren't upside down. Seven. Em can sometimes be good for hair, especially if you make a bunch of EMS in a row. A P can also become part of an eyeball. And we didn't s back in the lines segment. So as you can see, you already know how to do many of the components. Probably almost all the components of a really great doodled face. So now let's take a look in our next lesson on the anatomy of a face. 5. Doodle Faces Face Anatomy: in this lesson, we're going to explore the rules of drawing a face realistically. Now, don't worry. I'm not jumping from doodles right into realism. I just want you to get a better sense of the proportions that go into creating a realistic face. Generally face starts with an oval, and about halfway through is the eye level. Halfway between the eyes and the bottom of the chin is where the nose, the bottom of the nose rests and halfway between the nose and the chin. This is where the mouth iss Now, when you're doodling to face, it's nice to keep these proportions in mind, but certainly you can break those rules when placing the eyes. If the face is divided into about five different segments, the eyes will fall in segment two and four. And then, if we think about the nose and the mouth there, threw in some eyebrows, some crazy hair, and you can see you've got the start of a face. Now that's just to give you the basic relationship, and certainly you can change up those proportions to suit your needs, and you'll get all different types of personalities coming out of your doodle by doing that . But that is the general rule of thumb in how the faces proportioned 6. Doodle Faces Parts: in this video, we're going to talk about the different ways to make eyes, noses and mouths. Now that you have experience playing around with different lines and shapes, you can put those skills toe work in making the components for your character. Eyes, of course, could be a simple as two dots, and they could also be a simple as two circles. But you can play around with some other shapes of as well. You can do ovals in a nice horizontal fashion. You can do those same moviles in a more upright fashion. And, of course, you can go back and had some dots, which will give your character a direction to be looking in. Now you can get fancier with eyes, and you can do bit of 1/2 uh, arc there, do another little bit of an arc underneath, and you could add some eyelashes, simple little lines, and I'm curving them slightly. But you could do them straight out as well. And then, of course, so that, well, this point, they look a little vacant so we can add some pupils. And there, And if you just do some parentheses around those pupils, you have lovely feminine eyes. Now the nose, as we've talked about, can be a simple as backwards L or an upside down seven. You could do a bit of a J. It's a little curve into it. We've looked at how a five can make a lovely boldness knows, And then, of course, you can finish the five. It was a straight line, or you could even come back again with some curved lines There. Noses don't always have to be big, either. They could be little noses like a little hill. That way, we're even in the other direction. If you're looking up at your character, then you can do Let's make that a little bit more of a curve there and too little nostrils . And, of course, I've been drawing noses. So the character appears to be facing to the right. But you could certainly draw the news so that the character would be appearing to face to the left. Now, mouth could be just a ZZ as a simple straight line across for neutral or maybe slightly disgruntled. Look, then, of course, we have a open you. We're curved for a smile. That same curve turned around makes of round a wavy line makes a quivering mouth or disgruntled, and a lovely big happy smile course is formed by the letter Capital Letter D, which has a nice break. Lots of teeth showing type of smile. If your character is surprised or amazed, their mouth might be a simple letter O. And if they're really happy, could be a nice deep you. And you can even add a few little curved lines right at the end so that those cheeks air just full and really showing off that smile. If you want to do lips, they are more like a bracket, so it's a nice little point in the middle, and then you can finish those off with a wide open you curve at the bottom. Now that you have these components, let's see what you can do about making the chin shape for working on the chin and the hair . I have created a grid with nine identical faces so that you can see how the shape of the head or the chin can affect the exact same expression. So let's start with creating, um, just a nice U shape and one thing to keep in mind I've drawn these noses of the character appears to be facing toward the right. So you want to try to have a little bit more cheek area over on the left side? I also, instead of drawing the entire shape of the head, which you could dio, um, I focus more on just the chin. So this guy, we could have a little bit more angular, kind of squaring off the bottom of his gin. We could try for a long, skinny look there. This guy has ah, Wide Jiao at the bottom. This is fairly similar to that one. But give him a bit of an evil look with some Matt eyebrows there. And I can try keeping the shape much closer so that the eyes, nose and mouth take up most of the space as opposed in some of these where they are more proportioned to realistic face. So that just gives you some ideas of the different chin shapes that you could used to create your character. Now, hair can be a lot of fun as well. One of my favorite hair shapes is the s just a nice long open s kind of creates a little curl at the top and comes in and shapes the side of the face that way. Spiky hair is simply a bunch of capital. M's makes for fun, fun hair dio. You can also just do a bunch of lines for another short spikey hair. And of course, sometimes your character doesn't really have any hair. So I capped off our bald guy there, but we'll give him a few little fuel strands hanging on are evil. Guy might have big, bushy, curly hair, and sometimes you don't really even need to put any type of the head on it all. It's totally up to you. So now that you have learn some different ways to make eyes, noses, mouths, chins and hair, let's see about putting all those components together and creating doodle faces from scratch. 7. Doodle Faces Put Together: all right. Now it's time to put together what we've learned and create an array of cartoon faces. I have found that the key is to just see what develops rather than try to mimic a specific style or emotion, especially when you're starting out, you might start off planning to create a sad face and find that your doodle is lending itself mawr toward angry face. And that's okay with practice. You'll develop a personality for your characters. So let's get started now. I personally like to start with the eyes and the nose and then see what happens from there . So the most basic of eyes, of course, circles or ovals. Now you can just add in some pupils just like that, A knows a great knows to do. Is that upside down? Seven. So that's a swooping a smush like that. And then then, from there, I can kind of look at the expression that's happening with my doodle and decide whether it's going to lean more toward happy, sad, angry, amazed. So let's let's try to go with happy All right, that's looking pretty good. So let's do some eyebrows to match. And now I'm ready to put the face around it, or the outline of of the head now that the face is drawn. So I like to start rather than doing a whole big thing cause I'm not really sure how the hair is going to go with this point. I tend to draw swish like this. Now if I want to add an ear, then the ear is going to be between the eyes and the mouths generally were the eyes and the nose, depending on how big you want the year to be. Ah, letter C or if it premiered on the opposite side, a backwards letter C makes a great year. All right, now let's give our doodle some hair. He looks like he could be a pretty cool dude. So that was just a backwards see, or you a little bit of an s. That's to another little s there to some rounded lines. And while we have a face, it's just that easy. Alright, let's try another this time for the eyes. Let's do 2/2 circles and then to slightly curved lines. Now here I'm feeling, and not only the pupils, but I added a little bit more to the eye, Teoh, Give it a little bit more definition. Let's do a little curvy or knows. This time it's almost like an s. Now, at this point, this person is tending to look a little more like they're looking up. So we'll do some eyebrows out here to the sign, and maybe they're astonished. So we'll give them a little Oh, for mouth and again I can now fit in the head and the chin. I think I'm gonna go for a little bit more angular this time. Let's see how that works out. So in this that it was just a line and another line. So rather than doing, um, or you were Jay, I've kind of broken that down into more angular lines. Bit of an ear. We'll do this one by using those EMS to create some hair. All right, now we have an astonished guy kind of looking up. All right, let's create some more. Sometimes I like to start with the nose, and as I mentioned back in the video, talking about shapes a fun knows to make is using the number five. So I start with a line and ah, circle to close off the five or finished off the five, I would draw the eyebrows here. You could also think of this as a lower case, Letter B. At that point, if you didn't want to do the furrowed brows that way, now you don't always need to draw circles or ovals or, uh, shapes for the eyes. You can simply just put in two dots and we'll give this one kind of Ah, a little bit of a grumpy appearance here, So I just drew a straight line for the mouth. Now I've got a lot of angles going here in just one nice curve with the nose. So I think I'll give this guy a nice Kirby face. Now, this one. I went from cheek to cheek, and now I'm drawing up some straight lines there to get my my little doodle guy here, a bit of a jaw line that's a little more rotund, and maybe he's bold, so let's cap him off that way. Throw on some years, all right, maybe a little bit of hair. He's good to go. All right, let's see who else we can discover in our doodles. We've got some great little curvy lines here that are going to become eyes. And if I do some little curves here, we're starting to take on a little bit more of a feminine look with this. Because of that, I'm going to keep the nose pretty small Onley doing a small little rotated. L now for the mouth. I can do brackets for the lips. And, by the way, don't be afraid to turn your paper If it's easier for you to draw that way for the bottom of the lips. I dressed drew a curved line there. Let's give her some eyebrows and a swooping hair. So we've got a nice big S, another open curve there in a serpentine shape, and we'll just make that a little bit longer. We better give her chin, and there you go. All right, look a little vacant. So I think we'll add in semis there. And now we have, ah, another doodle face. Eyes don't always have to be open, either. You can do to curb lines at a nose. There's a little bit of a wavy line, was just a little bit of ah up ticket the ends there and I kind of adding another little line right at the end of that line, too. Give the illusion that this sleeping person is having a happy dream there bit of a face. Could I have some eye lashes? Gives a little bit more personality, some eyebrows Teoh here, over here and some more. Here again, all just sweeping sweeping lines. And now we have, ah, sleeping beauty.