Portrait Drawing 101: Nose drawing basics

1. Welcome: One of the things I love to draw the most of portraits in our quest to elevate our drawing skills and knowledge of anatomy can give us a push in the right direction in this class when we simplify and all that complicated stuff into bite-size pieces of info are easy to understand. Shorthands know esoteric jargon or complicated anatomy terms, just the basics of structure to get you to beautiful drawings. What's up, guys, My name is booby. I'm an art teacher and fine artists from Nigeria. This class is primarily for the intermediate artists who already possesses some foundational drawing skills, looking for something a little extra to enhance the quality of my drawings. Now I'm by no means an expert, but I'm more than happy to share whatever you need to learn about this topic over the years, we're going to start by analyzing the relevance anatomical landmarks of the nose before dissecting the nose into its major claims are studying how it relates to the other facial features. My goal here is to make this as enjoyable to learn as possible and in a condensed format demonstrating how we can apply anatomical knowledge. So I joined. Without going overboard, I'm looking forward to seeing your class projects or will you be able to glean from these lessons? That's all for this one. Thanks for watching. See you all soon. 2. Our tools: Over the next couple of minutes, I'll be going over the materials we're going to use for this class and the functions they will serve as it relates to our drawings. This is what I recommend, but if you have your current tools, feel free to use them. The paper I'll be using for most of this class is in Bristol, vellum sheets from massive starch. That's a great choice, my opinion, because it allows you to build many layers without damaging the tooth of the paper. And it responds well to repeat it, the ratios. The other paper I'll be using is the HP copy and prints printer paper. It's nice and bright, affordable, and always there when you need it. As a caveat, the printer paper, because of its lack of tooth and texture, is really only good for line arts. Anything involving value will be too much for it to handle for sketching out my drawing initially, I'll often use a mechanical pencil for this class. That'll be 0.7 millimeter Staedtler mechanical pencil, an HB lead. If you can get your hands on one of these, I also recommend a 0.3 millimeter Pentel. Want a three dx? I prefer these pencils are the starts because I don't have to think about sharpening. And that frees up mental space that I can channel into getting proportions rights naturally. At some point in the drawing process, we all make mistakes. To erase those errors. I typically shoot first for my kneaded eraser. Among all the erasing tools, I find this one to be the most protein. You can shape it however you like, and it doesn't leave behind eraser crumbs like irregular eraser. Again, mine from generals or fabric Estelle. And so far those brands seem to work just fine. My backup erasers and elasto my eraser from Tombow Mono. This is a fairly ubiquitous eraser and for good reason, it offers the structural integrity you can find in a larger obey Risa with a precision of a kneaded eraser. You can also shape it slightly with a knife. You didn't even smaller racing points, moving on, blending stumps are great for softening hard edges in your drawing or just covering a large area with some tone. If you don't have one, you can also use cotton buds to derive similar effects. Most of our drawing will be done with a set of graphite pencils from fabric Estelle, the one that I'm currently using has 12 pencils in its weights to H to HB. In reality, most of these pencils are superfluous and U12 age HB to be on for B pencil is all you need to make. These joins happened in case you really need to draw in the grades of pencils indicates how hard or soft and how light or dark the pencil lead will be. So each pencil is generally make lighter marks and having a harder lead and B pencils make darker marks. The higher the number next to the letter. The lights on heart of the pencil would be with the H grades and the soft tone darker with the bees. Graphite pencils, which we're really looking for. The pencil you can sharpen into really good taper and one that doesn't break off into chunks when you use it. If your pencil it takes those boxes, you're good to go. In the mix will also be some colored pencils. This one is optional, but if you want a bit of calling your drawing, you're welcome to join me and use them. I'm a bit picky with the brands with regards to color pencil, I tend to prefer more oil-based pencils like the polychrome most by Frederick Estelle, but have equally heard great things about the luminance by current dash. Darwin's called soft pencils. The task of drawing is hard enough. The last thing I want to do is draw a blood pencils. So to avoid this, I use my sharpening block and exacto knife to make sure my pencil stays super sharp for as long as possible. The sharpening block is from neat drum and doubles as a charcoal colored pencil and graphite sharpener. Suffice to say, I'm very happy with its. Alternatively, you can use some fine grit sandpaper to the same effects before using the sharpening block are used the exact tonight's to strip off the woods surrounding the pencil lead. Once I have anywhere from half an inch to three-quarters of an inch of export-led. Only then do I introduce the block to refine the shape of a lead to a fine point. Some of these materials would be easier to find than others. Personally, I purchased most of mine from Amazon, **** Blick or Joe's Auto Rama. See if you have access to those outlets, check them out. As you can see, this is a fairly minimalist approach. You don't need any high-tech gear or a myriad of different equipment. Most of these materials you probably already own. With that said, I don't waste any more of your time. Thanks for watching. I'll see you guys in the next one. 3. Anatomy & Structure: In this video, we're going to be looking at the anatomy of the nose and the major forms that comprise its underlying structure. Now of course, your artists are not surgeons, so I'm not going to be doing is describing the minutia of each subcutaneous elements. Instead, our focus will be on the anatomical landmarks. Be the most relevant to our drawing practice. To begin, I'll start by sketching out the nose of breaking it down into a few simple planes. I do this to minimize complexity until I get a better grasp of the proportions of my subjects. And my Payne's established a better define the specific contours of the nose. Paying special attention to the ball fridge and weighing. Those two elements are foundational to the structure of the nose and we must understand them fundamentally to draw them effectively. Beginning with the ball is the spherical form you have right between the nostrils. It's made up of two pieces of cartilage known as the greater Alar cartilage. In some noses, we can actually see the division between the two parts. For most people, it's barely noticeable distance that the ball or the wings of the nose, which are made up primarily of cartilage. It can be broken down into a larger top plane of any smaller side plane. The form of the wings carbon in an under, around the nostrils to create a kinda comma-shaped. This inward curvature is also mirrored in the septum, which is the piece of cartilage inferior to the ball and right between the nostrils. The bridge of the nose is the only one of the three major points that contains bone within its anatomically, the bridge can be broken down into the nasal bone and lateral cartilage with the maxilla and the side planes and the glabella bridging the gap between the nose and forehead. The nasal bone is the bony protrusion right below the goal Bella. As you move downward, it connects to the lateral cartilage, which is much more flexible, before connected further down to the ball of the nose. Each one of these nose parts as they seem running down the middle, splitting it into two equal parts and lefts and rights, reminder of the importance of symmetry, now joins with the facial features. As you work your way through these drawings, keep in mind the faster nature of the nose and the dynamism of the forms that comprise it. In a subsequent video lessons, we're going to see in real-time how the different parts of the nose require different treatments in terms of edges, value and line. That's a wrap for this video. See you guys in the next one. 4. Major planes of the nose: The human nose can be divided into four major planes. It top or front-facing plane, two-side planes, and the bottom plane. Breaking things down in this way ensures that we have good underlying structure and avoid making perspective errors at the start of drawing. These four major planes are clearly visible in a frontal shot. But as we move our head in space, more or less of each plane remains visible. In a frontal view. All the planes are in focus and full bilateral symmetry can be observed. You'll notice also that in this view, the side planes and bottom planes are partially downward facing to the top plane possessing a bit of an upward tilt. From a three-quarter perspective, only three of the four planes aren't viewed with one of the side planes of the nose completely obscured. In addition, the wing on the left-hand side is foreshortened and the remaining side plane appears larger than it was from the front. Conversely, in a side view, only the side plane and bottom plane of the nose can be seen in certain people, we can see the transition from bone to cartilage Along the nose bridge very clearly. And in others, it's a lot more subtle. Also, the nostrils from this perspective appear more streamlined, vaguely taken on the shape of a comma. When viewed from the bottom-up, the bottom plane possesses the greater surface area. The nostrils appear enlargement or the side and front planes appear foreshortened. When we look at the nodes from top down, the tip of the nose extends past the nostrils and the bottom plane of the nose is mostly hidden from view. The wings take on a very prominent shape and the nostrils appear as narrow slits. The ability to simplify their noses we see in life into these four planes will take some time. But I hope to the examples on screen, you can begin to get a sense for the practicality of these methods. Here I've deconstructed in those inside me to two basic planes, the side and the bottom one, utilizing straight lines, I'm able to get a sense for the overall gesture of the nose right below that, using the same basic structure, I changed up the contours a bit and very quickly I arrived at a decent looking knows. The idea here is to practice drawing noses with just those four planes and then building on that wireframe to make something realistic. For the next one, we have a nose in three-quarter view. I simplified it into a top side and bottom plane, paying attention to the rhythm of the ball of the nose, as well as the gesture of the wings. Oftentimes there is a conspicuous value change or highlights where the front plane transitions to the side plane. The bottom plane usually begins the lower fifth of the bulb of the nose wraps close to midway through the wings. Below a planar nodes are added to that structure. The nostrils, septum and more organic shapes around the wings to make it look more convincing. The same principles apply to this bottom-up. Do you only hear our frontline hand side planes are foreshortened and the nostrils and wing take center stage whenever you're drawing something organic like a nose, symmetry and proper alignments must be present in your execution. If one nostril is 20% bigger, I want to wing has a totally different gesture. The nose will look off. Plumb lines are useful in situations like this, but also just keeping an eye for the whole as you develop each part. This next one is somewhere between a three-quarter view and a side view with more of the site plan showing compared to the front plane. Getting the rhythm of the ball of the nose and wings is very important here in creating a useful planar nodes to then elaborate on later. You can opt to use only straight lines, but I find that curvilinear lines for the bottom plane make it easier to get better gesture. Right below that, I've tweak the shapes a bit to highlight the nuances of a bridge wings involved to create a nose that's closer to what I see, my reference when viewed from the front, it's easy to see how the major planes of the nose translate to a more developed sketch. It's all about finding where in space each plane transitions to the next and connecting them with flowing lines. The sketch below, tag field placement of a few lines can help us describe the form without excessive detail. A couple of lines indicate the ball of the nose. Simple but dynamically shaped nostrils be nosebleeds with some angle breaks a wings the floor with the ball of the nose, and we have something approaching reality. If we had to transform our noses from 2D cartoon cutouts, repetition is the shortest path to progression. I also recommend using a photo editing app to create visual overlays on your reference composed of these four planes, and then trying to sketch it out with your pencil and paper. First the planar nodes, and then a more refined version of that structure. With that said, that's gonna be it for major planes of the nose. Thanks for watching. See you soon. 5. Relationship with the features: Given that the nose doesn't exist in isolation, must consider its relationship to the rest of the head. If you were to draw it correctly. When viewed from the front, the nose sits between the eyes and mouth with the nostrils a third of the way down from the eyebrows. This principle of thirds is a useful guide and getting good proportions as it applies, not just here, but across the entire head. The borders of the nodes from the side usually line up with the tear duct of the eyes. And the arrows are both eyes connect the bulb of the eye to form a triangle. From the side we get a nice diagonal from the wings of the nostrils to the eye sockets. Bridge of the nose projecting outwards from glabella. Between the nose and the mouth is the philtrum, depressed cylindrical groove and a useful landmark and describing the form of the face. The outside border of the mouth usually extends beyond the width of the nose from the front, creating a diagonal connection between the two features. Of course, we can always play around with these proportions to alter the look of our subjects. Not to mention some people who deviate slightly from these relationships anyway, ultimately, this is just info it's nice to have in your head in case you get lost as you try to develop your picture. I hope this was useful. That's all for this one. Thanks for watching. 6. Common drawing mistakes: In this video, I'm going to cover what I find to be the most common mistakes I see in beginning of those drawings and offer my perspective on the steps you can take to avoid these pitfalls. For the first example, we have a nose that I can only describe as resembling a waveform. It's flat, wavy, and devoid of any form. But seriously, the issue here stems from the conception of a nose from memory as opposed to an analysis where we see nature. To correct this, we need to break down the nose into its major forums and approach each part of it individually before connecting the points together. In the example below, I started by defining the bridge of the nose, making sure to indicate the angle break between the nasal bone and lateral cartilage. From there, I draw the boundaries for the ball of the nose, connected all four lines to form a circle. Next, I drew a horizontal line running through the bottom of the circle. I've used the endpoints to form my bottom plane of the nose at this point, or that was left with the wings of the nose, which were easy to indicate with all the structure laid down. In this second example, we're dealing with a similar problem. This time we don't even have nostrils. So no overlap in the forums is something that is level with the wings and no courage to speak of. And we haven't knows that only a mother could love. Fortunately for us, these problems are easy to fix, beginning with a top plane, into a bottom plane, and finally side plane. And already we're making progress. From these planes. We can begin to better specify the ball, bridge and wings before outlining the contours when we're happy with this symmetry, alignment of things. As far as the details of getting the proportions, I'll be talking about that more in depth in the notes demo. Moving on, in this next example, we have the nodes inside view and a case of exaggerated nostrils. Unless the person you're drawing is taking a very deep breath, the nostrils won't be that large. In addition, making the nostrils too dark in comparison to the shadow around it is also another common beginner mistake. In the version below, you'll notice a more compact nostrils, far less contrast between it and the surrounding shadow. The next nodes is super bubbly. I am not talking about his personality. A typical case of too many and organic shapes, no knows is that spherical are composed of ROC curves and s-curves, and that's what you have here. We have to infuse are driving more structure and we do that through straight lines and ankle breaks. Not to mention, you're typically not going to have a nose bridge That's saw cylindrical. And if you do take a picture because that's crazy. Over here, our nose is lacking in any separation between the major forms. Shape of the nostrils and wings are unnatural. The bridge of the nose is too wide. I can keep going for really the solutions were nose like this is the implementation of a step-by-step process using simple geometric shapes to reduce the complexity of the nose. Like you triangles are straight lines in general to create an envelope shape for the nose before getting into the more specific shapes. If you nail the structure, I guarantee you the likeness will follow. That's gonna be it for communist drawing mistakes. Thanks for watching. See you all soon. 7. Nose demo: Proportions & Rendering: In this video, we're going to be drawing a nose in three-quarter view. And unlike the videos prior, our focus here will be the rendering or form as synthesising the knowledge you've acquired this far to create a realistic looking knows, the first theatre consists of a linear layer and I'm looking firstly create an envelope shape for the nose made up of the four major planes. And using that as a guide for all my decisions going forward, based on the orientation of the nose, I can see that the side plane on the right hand side is foreshortened. So it'd be thinner than starting on the left. The nose is also angled toward the rights to the line of symmetry running down the middle, not be perfectly vertical. John, that I can't stress enough the importance of keeping your lines lights so you can adjust them as you go. Mistakes at this point, I likely so we want to keep our drawing open. Once I'm happy with my planner knows I progressed to indicating the major forms of the Windsor septum, limited myself straight lines and using the wireframe of our planar nodes to guide the placement of my marks are also lightly indicate the bed bug line, as well as the location of the highlights and boundaries of the nose bridge as you draw the settlement wings, remember that the curve inward into the nostril to create a specific kind of rhythm between the three parts. The ships are alternate, circular combination of streets, curves, and the accompanying angle breaks. As you transition from lines who value careful observation of our reference and the light source tells the simple story. We have four major planes. The bottom thing is mostly shadow. The right maxilla is our next talk is plain, followed by the left maxilla. And finally our front plane, which the light is off a bunch, if you can keep these big value sheets and perspective will be able to create the illusion of form, even as we add more detail. In delineating a shadow shapes, I'll start by defining the cast shadow, leaning one consistent shadow value and then darken the occlusion shadow in the area under the nostril. We want to keep this shadow soft but specific to be mindful of hard edges around the borders and where we are too much contrast in this area. Right above the cast shadow, we have to form shadow. On the whole. It's lighter than the cast shadow and can be separated into a core shadow and reflected light. My approach is to first create an average form shadow value that's a bit lighter than the cast shadow. As I do that, I made sure to lighten up the value slightly as I move towards the left and preserve the bottom of the form shadow to serve as my reflected lights. If I find that an area has gotten too dark, like seeing the reflected light, I license my research and the values I see my conformity to my reference. So just squinting your eyes and Dalton and back-and-forth between your drawing on your reference to better see the differences between the two. Despite the variety of values you see in the shadows, you will find that even the lightest parts are darker than the darkest tones. This complete separation of light and shadow is an axiom of realism, one that must be followed for our work to appear three-dimensional. We're basically done with the shadows for now, beginning in order from darkest to lightest, we have the occlusion shadow under the nostrils, the rest of the cast shadow, the core shadow, and the reflected light. The extremes of our value scale has been established. The shadows representing one end of that spectrum and the white of the paper the other. In modelling my halftones, I prefer to start with the darkest ones. In this case, that'll be the values in the rightmost side plane of the nose. Getting an average value of this region is my first school and making sure that the tone is put even lighter than our light to shadow value. After that, I'll darken parts of that bass tone to represent this downward facing minor plane. Enlighten the parts which are receiving the most lights. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. As I begin to model the form the left wing of the nose, foremost in my mind is the relationship, the values here we'll have to the rest of the half-tones already-existing. The average value of this region is going to be lighter than the values on the right maxilla and decrease on the left wing. The transitions between the lightest and dark is half-tones here must be soft and should merge optically when you squint your eyes. The forms of the notes, for the most part turn very slowly to outside the nostril and a couple of spots on the outside border of the wings. We don't want any hard edges. The left maxilla up the nose has a local value that's a bit lighter than that of the left wing of two, we can use the area we just competed as a measuring stick to ensure that we don't go off track in this region. And do my best to bridge the gap between the two forms, utilizing the right intermediate values and paying attention to the value shapes as separate the bridge from the maxilla. At this point, I feel comfortable indicating the highlight on the nose bridge, as I alluded to earlier, this plane is the lightest plane our picture and the highlights is the lightest value Beginning, be careful not to exaggerate the scope of the highlights. It's a part of the nose bridge, not the entire thing. In addition to the process of creating the highlights, will necessarily create some hard edges to remember to go back in with your pencils and soften those transitions. Before I call it quits with this drawing, we're going to come through each section individually and look for shapes to improve, edges, to enhance and values to correct. It's important to be patient and really look closely at your reference to spot those inconsistencies in your drawing that had skipped your attention prior. What's usually place where you're satisfied? You can certainly add your own artistic flare, maybe even decide that you want to deviate from the reference more significantly, Rome was not built in a day and good drawing does not come to us overnight. And attitude of continuous improvement. Asking the right questions and a willingness to try and try again was the only way we can make progress. My goal with this drawing was to illustrate to you the end product we study of structure and anatomy vis-a-vis the nose, unless I still have a long way to go. But every bit of extra knowledge informs our joint decisions and helps us be more competent at what we do. That's it for this one. The next video I'll be going over the class project and the exercises that will get you to better drawing. 8. Class project: Alright, so you've made it this far, well done, or that is left to do as a class project. For this one, your task will be to draw the nose and five different angles from the front, from the side, three-quarter view, bottom-up and top-down. I want you to focus on creating a good planner knows from that base, developing the contours more specifically, by the way, I've chosen five angles because I want you to be versatile and your ability to execute. You can get there. I feel is by drawing the nose in different perspectives. We show to reference the video lessons in this class. If you find yourself stuck, needles and guidance, I'm more than happy to answer questions in the discussion section or when you post your class project. Also, if you're looking for good photographs to work from, you can check out pixels or Pinterest and they've got you covered. Part of why this project is mostly focused on getting the proportions is because as the aspects of drawing people find the most challenging. However, if you feeling confidence, you join skills, you can move past the linear and instead of tonal for these five joins, it goes without saying, but I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what you guys create and hopefully offering some useful feedback to speed up the learning curve. I'm sure at this point I sound like a broken record, but I'm going to keep harping on its practice, practice, practice. You can practice in. I mean, some of you join us after we do a couple of times just because you're not always going to get it right the first time. Nonetheless, we love to draw, so we keep going. Having said that, half of my edits either reviews you like the class. Thanks so much for watching. Bye bye.