Pastels & Portraits: Beginner's Guide to Drawing Facial Features

1. Intro: Hey everybody. My name is Heather sportsman. Welcome back to my Skillshare class. This one is called pastels and portraits of beginner's guide to drawing facial features. In this class, you're going to learn how to draw the eyes, the nose, and the mouth. We're going to break them down into its simplest forms, lines and shapes. Then we're going to use the pastels to our advantage to create the depth, light and form to give it the three-dimensional look. So you're going to learn some shading and methods and techniques. And so by the end of this class, you'll walk away with the confidence to draw those three facial features that will later on help you to build up even more confidence when we learn how to draw a complete portrait, human face, okay, this is really what most people are afraid of tackling because they are fearful of, you know, I'm not gonna get it right is now going to look like the person. I've never drawn a person before. It's all these things. It's not, the proportions are going to be off is so many. I know this class is perfect for beginners. Those of you that you're not just quite ready to take on the entire thing all at one time. We're only going to draw three things. The eyes, the nose, and the mouth. And I'm going to show you how to do it using basic lines and shapes. That's it. Sometimes maybe five steps or less. Sound like a good thing. Okay. And I'm gonna be right here to help you build up the strength and the skills that you need to be successful in drawing a portrait of initially, okay, but we're going to start small first baby steps, right? So if you're ready, I'm ready to help you take on a challenge. So let's get right into this project videos so you'll know what you need to be successful, alright? And I'm so excited that you're joining me. Let's go. 2. Project Video: Often think about like when I was in high school and college and how I did all those studies of the human face and the body and all that stuff. I did a figure. Like, why did I do so many? But I know why. When you study something, you become more keenly aware of it, you pay more attention to it. It's like magnify it. Yeah. Sorry, I put on glaze, but sometimes visuals help you understand. Okay, You guys. Alright, well, we all studied in school, some of us more than others. Some of those movies, but you get the idea. But in this case, this is why we're doing these small little studies of the eyes, the nose, and the mouth. It's going to help us to focus more on those particular features before we take on the entire portrait altogether, you follow me. Okay, great. So for our project, what we're going to need soft pastels or pastel pencil. You're going to need paper, kneaded eraser, wreck, and a blending stump. Now the beginning of the course, it gives you three simple reference guides or cheat sheets, who doesn't love those that you can refer to it anytime to help you draw the eyes, the nose, and the mouth. Even if you get stuck on one part, you can look at those. The middle of the class. I'm going to show you step-by-step how to draw the eyes, the nose, and the mouth using basic lines and shapes. And at the end of the lesson, I showed you how to use the pastels to apply color and value to create form and give those features at three-dimensional look. Yeah, alright, your project, what you're actually creating, you will submit three complete pastel drawings of an eye or a set of eyes, a nose, and a mouth. See, here's my exemplar. 123. Pretty cool. Or a variety of so I'm focused on light, realistic colors like you want some blue eyes, cool. Green loops. Work it out. Alright. Now that you've seen this, Are you ready? Because we're going to jump right into it. Nicks the eyes. Make sure you get your supplies at it now try to run, but it sounded okay. Let's go. Yeah, we're gonna go and draw the eyes next, get supplies into the next video. Here we go. I'm ramen again. Let's go get. 3. Drawing the Eyes: Good. Welcome to the first lesson in pastels and portraits. Let's go ahead and grab our materials, whichever pastel, pencils or pastels or read kneaded eraser and our blending stump. Going to jump right in and step one. Step one, we need to draw up like a football shape almost for the top part of our eyes. Okay. There's a sixth tutorial right there in each corner. We're just gonna kinda make two little dots. These are guidelines for us and we're gonna make a horizontal line connecting them. Alright, you guys see that at the bottom we're going to go ahead and try to match that top football shape, have football shape that we created. All right, that's going to make up the lower lead of our eye, right at step one. We're one and done. So far. Yeah. Now step two, we're going to focus on making the corners of her eyes are kinda like where our tear tear ducts are. Okay. Those are going to help make really good markers for us as well to know where to start and they kinda look like little parentheses. I see I'm curving, line, curving line. There we go. And I'm gonna go a bow of the eyelid because this what I'm doing now this represents the eye ball. The ball of the eye sits in our socket. There's a circle, okay? So this is, this helps us to recognize the anatomy of the eye. And even if you were to stop the video, you would see that. Now we don't need these lines anymore. These are just guidelines, but it really helps us to appreciate the shape of the eye in its totality, Okay? To really help us understand like what are we drawing? So look at is starting to take shape, is starting to take some form here, right now, step three, we're done going on step four, we're going to focus on the iris now. Now that is the colored part of the eye now, yeah, I didn't know. Yeah, I was gonna be getting a little science. Listen here just a little bit. Okay, Now I teach art, not science. Well, I taught art not science, but this is important too. So I'm just going to go in, I'm dive in writing and making this circle inside of the act. Notice I'm going right above the LEA lightly with a little line. Okay. Now below the lead, but above the lead lightly, Yossi, just lightly with my circle. Okay. Now I'm erasing it. Okay. I don't need that. Wait a minute. I do need that weight. Yes, I do. It's good that I caught this on camera and I'm not going to take this out. You know why? Because teachers make mistakes and it's good that you all see this. Their guidelines still needs to be there and you know why? So as I put it back, you know why? Because it's going to help us Draw step five, which is the, I lead the upper leaves and we're going to start back in that little corner. And then when we do that little dot earlier than to start from there and we're gonna just draw a line slightly above that iris circle that we drew earlier. There we go. We're going to bring it back. Here. You guys see that? Now I'm going to erase the guideline. Now I'm going to erase it. I don't need it anymore. Alright. There we go. No. That's it. That's it. Yeah. Guess what? You are done. You literally just drew the basic shape of an eye. Now I know there's no frills and there's no lashes and value and all those things, add it and what I'm doing now and you can follow along with me and do this as well on your papers. I'm just kind of going in and giving a slight little shape up. As you can see, I'm going in and rounding out some of the features of the eye. I'm going in and rounding out the eyeball, the iris as you can see, the lead Laura lead the corners of the I'm even going in and kinda adding like the little crease that all of us normally have at the bottom of the Abbot. Don't worry about the value that's common in later lessons. Alright, but up next, we're drawing the nose. So step six, we're done. Good job. Yeah, get ready for the nose. Here we go. 4. Drawing the Nose: All right, now we should be all warmed up from our drawing the eyes lesson. That was lesson number one. Now we're getting into drawing the nose so we have our supplies out and we are ready. Okay. So I'm just going to grab my still pencils here. I think I'm gonna go with I'm gonna go with green this time. Yep, gonna go green. So when thinking about drawing the nose, okay, we're going to think about just the basic shapes. So the nose, you're going to start out with step number one and we're going to just draw a circle, small circle Desi. Now you're a person who has trouble with drawing the nose. Okay. You can always draw a vertical line straight down the middle and then two semi-circles on each side of the line. You can do that or tell you what. I'll show you something else, okay? Because some people really have trouble flip my paper over on the back. You're going to draw a dashed line. Okay? Steel vertical line but a dashed line, alright. And then lightly, because this is a guideline, lightly. Draw over that. Go ahead and draw your semicircle, dashed line again on each side. And then you can lightly come over there, guideline. And voila, you have your full circle. Now that's for people that are just like I can't draw a circle, I can draw a vertical line. Okay? But if you're confident enough, Go right ahead. Now I erase my guideline. Next step, on each side of that circle, that first larger circle we drew, I'm going to draw two smaller circles that are going to overlap, that they need to be about the same height. As you can see. And I drew two light little guidelines to measure that for myself. And if you really wanted to take it a step further and see how to do that cross line, you could do that as well. That can help you. Then erase that. Keep referring to your tutorial, your reference guide. I'm just gonna kinda clean up some lines here. Okay? So now we're going to focus on the bridge of the nose and that's the part that runs up the middle, that longer part of our nose. Just two vertical lines slightly at an angle. Now we're gonna go from in-between those two smaller circles to draw our septum. You see those people that get those rings right there in the middle. Or even if you notice a bool that has a ring in their nose right there, that's called the septum. The septum, that's what we're drawing right there. So that's step three. Complete it. Done. Yeah. You just kinda, kinda shape that a little bit and going into step four, what kind of nicht? Diagonal line from the smaller circles to the septum. And that is actually going to help us to create our nostrils. Nostrils. What's funny about those? Yeah, they actually, I always tell my students that they look like little teardrops, if that helps at all. When you're thinking about drawing them, see that it's like a little teardrop on each side. Like a little teardrop or a rain drop? Like that. Yeah. Now I'm going to round out that symptom just a little bit more. Yeah. But that is it. You're done. Of course, I'm shaping it up and whatnot, but the value is going to come later in the Calais. We're done already. Can you believe it? Oh my God. It went by that quick. Are you excited? Are you happy? You should be five steps or less. Did not tell you that. Let's go on to the mouth. You're done. 5. Drawing the Mouth: Okay, So now we're gonna get into drawing the mouth and the first steps to drawing the mouth. And I think I'm gonna go ahead and use my pink and red colors for this. We're going to start off with drawing three circles. And this is going to represent the top lip. So I'm going to draw one circle, little bit lower, and then two that are overlapping. Same height, a little bit higher. Okay? Cat looks like Mickey Mouse. Just a little bit. This is step one. And then I'm going to follow those curves. Follow those curves. Watch what happens. This is going to represent the shape of the loop. Okay? So I'm gonna take my pastel pencil, make that little dip the top, like the cleft of your loop and go around. I'm going to bring this line down to the live. And it's gonna kinda stop almost at the bottom of the lower circle. All right. And I'll make a little dot on both sides. Okay? And, uh, kinda helped me to stay in line. Okay, so that's step two. Now, I don't always do this, but I think this center line does help to keep some symmetry with things. So I'm going to start from the very center of that middle circle. And I'm going to bring a line straight down and then I'll put a little dot right there at the bottom. Okay? So you can almost make by folate or T, bring it down, put a dot at the bottom. This is going to serve as a basis for the bottom lip. Nested three, that's done. Alright. Now step four, we're going to draw on some people like to say, in a loop sees or an oval. You can use interchangeably. I'll just say an oval. Okay. This is going to represent part of the bottom lip that step four done. Now let's go on to step five. See that little point in the corner we started with. We're going to draw another old starting there and it's going to overlap with that center 0 that we drew. And they were gonna go to the other side. And we're going to draw another one and it's going to overlap as well. All right, done. Step six, last one. Let's follow the curves. Let's start from the left side. We're going to follow the curves of those ovals that we drew and this is going to represent the crease of our mouth. And then once you've done that, you can begin to shape the mouth a little more. This is where you can begin to add a little bit more character. In step five. Okay, get a little more comfortable. And if you're working from my tutorial reference, but from your own, this is where you can really look at the person's lips and begin to make it resemble more of who they are. But right now, we're just getting basically how to draw it down and that's it. You're done. You ready to move on? Step six is done with snakes. Adding value. 6. Adding Value to the Eyes: Alright, so now we're going to add a value to the eyes. I don't want to use my blue colors here and I'm first start off with the pupil. The pupil should be a circle. You have problems drawing a circle. I just say, move your pastels in a circular motion. The pupil is gonna be the darkest part of your eye. You can even cheat a little bit if you want. Use your blending stump. Put a little color down and move in a circular direction with that. Okay, That always helps. And then now I'm taking my softer pastel, larger piece and I'm filling in the iris or the colored part of my eye with the blending stump, getting a nice layer of base color down. Okay, spreading that out really well. And again, I'm not a history teacher, science teacher, and none of it, but trying to help out a little bit loose. I'm about the anatomy. So the sclera, the white eyes is not really white. It's made up of a bunch of blood vessels. So whenever you are adding value to the sclera, the whites of your eyes, please make sure that you are not just leaving them white. If you leave them white, it looks more cartoonish and that's what we want to avoid. If you're going for a realistic look, if you want the cartoonish anime, manga style, leave it white. If you want it realistic, you're going to add value. Okay? So now all I'm doing is going in and adding a little bit more contrast and value to the iris and the pupil around the edges. Take him my blending stump, born around the upper lead. And making that look a little bit more rounded, like it has an actual fold. Blending stumps are great, but I still love my fingers when it comes to blending things. Pay, I am a sucker for that. I must say so muscle. So you choose either or is fine. But try to keep your hands off your papers so you can have less smudges. That's also important as well. All right. You can always use a white pesto to try and create highlights. I will tell you it's a little bit more difficult. So you can use your kneaded eraser to lift some of the color. And if you are working from my reference tutorial, that's great to look at the highlights in the eyes and the shadows in the eyes. But if you're working from a realistic photo or if you work in from real life, that's great as well. Okay. I want you to just continue to build layers in contrast by using dark and mid tones as you see me doing here. All right, just keep building, keep working. That's going to add character to your drawing and continue adding that value in the direction of your shapes. Okay, that helps to keep your drawing in unison. So I'm just going to continue adding my value to my lower leaves. As you can see here. Going around those bottom, going back over to the top, just making little small adjustments as I go Wait, where you see fit, right? Constantly going back. Now, this pore gets tricky, the reflections, this gets tricky because it's always going to be different and it only depends on how much light is bouncing off of the iris of the eye. Everybody is going to look different depending on the light in the room is, depends on the location the person is it and how their face is turned or what have you. Especially if you're working from a photograph or real life. So if you're working from my reference is going to look different. If you're working from a photograph right now, is going to look different. Don't beat yourself up about it. If you're working from your imagination, that's fine too. I'm not beating you up about it. Okay. Have fun with this. This is just to get you started. Okay. We're almost done. We're almost done the next day I'm going to talk about as he's, Alice is Lord have mercy. My students. Girls, these lashes at the top go from under the upper lash and then out. The lashes at the bottom go from inside the lower lid and out. And they are much lighter and thinner. Okay. I know we like these 50 pound lashes, but there's not always realistic. And you're done. There we go. Okay. So up next we're going to add value to the nose. Good job. Yeah. 7. Adding Value to the Nose: However, yeah, We are back now with adding value to the nose. And you know what, I'm going to choose green. Okay? Yeah, I'll choose green. As you can see, I have my guidelines here. I'm going to start with my largest circle and I'm going to follow the shape of it. And just going to begin adding value, bridges and nose, following the guidelines, as you can see, I'm starting off with a darker green, darker green, and I'm going around those guidelines down to the bottom, coming around right sag one back up. And if you notice, I'm ending up with another set of lines that are kinda conversion of the breach. Oh, the nose. Yeah. And that's exactly what I'm looking for. I use my blending stump. Yes. The blending stump, the rounded areas of the nose, the circular areas are gonna be your lightest. So make sure that you get a lighter tone pastel for this. Okay, again, blending sounds work-based for quick coverage, but on my hand rule, to use the hands. So this methane. So I'm gonna go back filling in my sights to lose sad nostrils. Plus gamma should be key the paper clean. Okay. I'm using a little mid tone green here. And I am looking at the reference guide as well as I'm working. And you see how I kind of went outside on the left side? Yeah. It's okay. If you read it, you feel like you missed. That's what the kneaded eraser is for. Use it. Erase if you have to clean it up. It's not a big deal. Okay. Use your kneaded eraser. So I'm going to continue to my value and blend. And I just love how soft these pests are. Fun fact though real quick. Did you know that the inside of your nostrils really armed but it's just a play on light or shadows. Should I say it's something I learned in college. And I feel like this is why artists are so important because we're record keepers. You know, when you see all these old paintings and pictures and we look at people's faces and their nostrils and things are black or darker. It's, it's because of how the light is shone or captured, or maybe if their heads are tilted a certain way and the light is shown as out of their face. It almost looks like maybe the inside of their noses are illuminated in a way. And is true. It is very true. Is out of your nostrils and Blake, a visual flashlight up, Don't you realize it, you know. But any who just wanted to throw it out, it's a yeah, so just continue building with your mid tones and your values and adding the value in the direction of your guidelines, once again, helps you to continue to build things and keep your whole drawing insane. You see how I took that white pesto? I made those highlights. And I'll probably do you pick the wrong color? Nose? I will pick green nodes. For somebody to be thinking about a boo-boo. Something like My bad job. But hey, angry and he is my husband's favorite code anyway. So shout out to Mr. sportsman. I know he loves green. So I'm going around and I'm kinda just adding some final touches around the edges. Shadows. Ya, realize how quick this is. We are really done. Your move it on. Adding value to the mouth is with snakes. 8. Adding Value to the Mouth: Right, So now we're gonna get into how we're adding value to the mouth. So make sure you have your supplies. You definitely going to need your blending stump for this. And if you notice, I went ahead and picked up the larger soft pastels just so I can maneuver a little bit faster across larger areas this time. Now, something I want you guys to keep in mind. If you are standing in front of the mirror and you look at it, you're still face on, your mouth is closed, the darkest area of your mouth is decrease and the outline of your mouth, and you can look back at your reference guide for that is, well, okay, this is where I will start adding the darkest values. And as you can see, I got a darker red because that's what I'm going with for my my lip color here. I'm not worried about skin color theory and all that stuff because like I said before, if you want purple leaves, green loops, orange loops, whatever, do your thing. I don't care. But notice I'm taking my blending stump and I'm going over these areas and spreading that color out quickly. Again, if you miss my last class and you have some of that past CEO does kinda going every which way on your paper. You can give your paper a quick tap. Take your rag and wipe your surface off, or just blow the dust away real quick. And you're good to go. Continue blending. Continue blending with your soft pastels. Use that blending stump to spray their color out quickly. Right now, we're not too concerned about gotta get everything in the right spot. We're just concerned about getting that color spread out all over. Okay, We're going to come in and do some refining a little later. Alright? But if you notice, I still am kind of following along those guidelines that we set for ourselves earlier with those ovals are ellipses, as some of you like to say. And those circles at the top, I'm still kinda following those guidelines with the shape of the mouth or the lips. Notice that when you look as well, all of our mouths have like these little wrinkles in them, like creases, I guess blue column wrinkles. Wrinkles like I loops are old or something that crazy. Old loops. I'm joking, but we have them. And what you could do is you could take a lighter pastel and just go in a vertical direction, place those wrinkles in there. You can blend them out with your blending stump just as I'm doing here. Okay. And something that I like to do. Okay. Because I just want to soften that up a little bit. I'll come back in with another darker pastel. Then refine. Once again. See that constant refinement, constant refinement because we also want to create contrasts. We want some things to stand out, pop out, right? We want to give that three-dimensional look. Yes. So just keeping in mind, I'm making some very voluptuous loops here. You know, very voluptuous loops. You'll lose. Don't have to be like mine. Nice and juicy. But this is what I chose to do. So with it, again, still refining the corners under the lip also is very important. You can give a little shadow around the edge across the top. And that is pretty much it. You can still come in and refine in those certain areas. Once again, go back if you want to put in a little bit more of the wrinkles. Okay? But this is very, very, very basic. Now, in later classes, I will go even more in depth in detail with how to draw more realistically. But this is just a crash beginners course to get you started and build your confidence with what you can do, okay, with which you can do. And I'm proud of you for doing it. All right. Good job. Yeah. 9. Conclusion: So you should be giving yourself a round of applause. Okay? You have tackled three things. Alright? They may seem small to some people, but for us, they're huge. Okay. We've got to take it. Alright. You have drawn the eyes, the nose, the mouth. You have studied. Okay, yoga hand-off in this class. I'm so very proud of you. Not only have you done that, but you use pastels, alright? Some of you may not even have ever picked up a pastel before. You've learned some shading techniques in this class and how to create form. Adding that in to really give these features are three-dimensional loop and you're drawing a portrait yet, mind-blowing. I'm so proud of you. At the beginning. You got to crawl before you can walk. I think you just start walking. Well, maybe we're getting there. We're getting it regardless. I'm so very proud of you. Okay. Make sure that you upload those projects, those studies, how hard you work to the project gallery makes sure that if you have really enjoyed my class, please leave a review, let other people know, Hey, come on over c, we have the sportsman is talking about she knows her stuff. I enjoyed our class. I want you to take something away from it as well. Even if it's just a good time, a laugh, a new hobby, something, a lesson learned. I enjoyed having you with me. I hope to see you the next time when we dive a little bit deeper into portraits, okay, because we don't keep leveling up guys. Alright, thanks for joining me until next time. Take care.