Transcripts
1. Introduction : Hey, welcome back
to another class. My name is Braden Messer. I'm an artist, author Youtuber, and today I'm going to be the one that
teaches you how to draw. This is part two of a three part series that
I'm making where I'm taking you through and I'm
showing you how you can begin to draw a portrait. We're going to be using a couple different references
for this one. The first is, of
course, the reference in question that we're
going to be drawing. The second is going to be reference number
two where I have overlaid the Lus head on top
of the original reference. Then the third reference
is going to be the aro head model that I have placed at the relative angle. The structure of this class is going to be much
like in part one. I'm going to be taking
you through and I'm going to show you how you can begin to draw the portrait by leaning heavily
into the lumos head. Once the lumus head
has been drawn, I'm then going to
show you how you can establish your contour lines for the basic shape of the hair as it is placed
on the lumus head. Once we do that, I'm
going to show you how you can build the eyes by using frame lines and giving yourself the necessary structure
so that you can build out those eyes in
proportion to each other. Then we're going
to move on and I'm going to show you
how you can use the underlying lumas head to
effectively place your nose. We're then going to move
on and I'm going to show you how to build
out the lips and you're going to see how you can use what you've already
drawn to help you gauge exactly where the corners of the mouth reside and
building the lips from there. Then I'm going to
show you how to place the Saro planes to frame the basic structure
of the face itself. Once we have all that drawn, I'm then going to be
walking you through hatching and we're going
to be talking about that. I'm going to be explaining
how you can build values. I'm going to show
you how you can accentuate the value scale to its fullest potential so that you can really make
your drawing pop. And then we're
going to be moving on and I'm going to show
you how we can detail out the hair and really bring that into its fullest detail. And then we're going
to wrap it all up and I'm going to show you how to go through and detail out
the rest of your portrait. I will say that if you find
yourself enjoying this class, if you like the structure, if you like the flow, if
you like the terminology, if it's making sense
for you and you think, wow, I really like this, then I would highly
encourage you to pick up a copy of my book,
Drawing the Portrait. Step by Step Lessons for Mastering Classic
Techniques for beginners. I will provide a link
in the description of the class so that if you want
to order that for yourself, add that to your library. Definitely, you should do that. Make sure to upload
your projects. I always love seeing what
you guys are able to create. Follow one along with me
throughout my classes. Leave your review of
the class as well. And then that way I can
showcase your project in my monthly newsletter that comes out the first half of
every single month. It is a great way for you to get not only your name out there amongst like minded artists
in the skillshare community, but your art as well. That's it. That's
all seeing glass.
2. Drawing your Loomis Head: All right, step number
one when drawing our portrait is that we
want to draw a circle. Now, there are a couple
ways that you can do this. You can either draw
the circle manually, or I would recommend that if
you have any reservations, draw it with a compass tool. This will give you
a perfect circle with very little effort. Then we want to
place our side oval, which effectively elongates
the cranium for us. Now when you're
drawing your oval, keep in the back of your
mind and try to visualize. The top of that oval needs to align roughly with the
subject's hair line. The bottom of that
oval needs to align roughly with the bottom
of the subject's nose. Okay, That is the
single hardest part of this whole process because it dictates where you place
the facial features. Then we're going to
place our vertical and our horizontal axis lines, and this helps us gauge the perspective of
the head in space. Then we're going to
extend the top of that oval over for
the hair line. We're going to extend
the horizontal axis line over for our brow line. And then we're going to
extend the bottom of the oval over to give us the bottom
of our subjects nose. Then we're going to place
the center line of the face. Then we're going to extend on the far side up to
about the brow line. And then we're going to extend the vertical axis
line down a bit. And then pull that
over and connect that to the bottom of the
center line of the face. This gives us the basic
shape of our subjects face. Then here we're going to
extend the neck down. This is a unique angle and that it is a three quarter turn, but she is slightly
looking down at us. Because of that fact, I want to start to draw in her shoulder that she has here by placing
the shoulder line. What this is going to do
is this is going to push the subject's face back
a bit and it's going to give us a rough depth of field. So we're going to have the shoulder that's
going to be closest to us and it's going to
push that face back a bit, which in turn is going to make our portrait a little
bit more dynamic, okay? All right, so something
just like that, a rough two dimensional shape. And now what we're going
to do is we're going to erase this part of
our initial circle. Okay, nothing fancy here, but we're going to erase
this part of the circle. Back past the vertical
axis extension on the beginning of the jaw, back to roughly where
the back of the neck would connect to the
backside of the cranium. We won't worry about
that right now though. Let's go ahead and
place our anchor points for the upper
and the lower lip. Okay, The top anchor point is going to give us a
rough estimation of where the top of that
upper lip is going to sit. And then our bottom anchor
point is going to give us a nice estimation of where the bottom of the lower
lip should reside. Then we're going to extend
our cheek playing line from the center of our axis
lines on the side oval. We're going to pull that
down right about there. Then we have one on the
other side of the face. But as you can see, once
we get past the nose line, the curvature of the face makes it to where we
can't really see it. Then I want you to take your needed eraser and
just very lightly go ahead and erase your alums head and make it to where it's
more or less transparent. And this will stage
the next lesson.
3. Placing your Ear & Hair Outlines: Okay, so when it comes
to this approach, what we want is we want to
start with our subject's ear. Now, based off of
the reference photo, we can see that
right about here is where the ear lobe resides. And then of course it's
covered by our subjects hair. For a portrait that
would have shorter hair, we would begin with
the ear as a whole. But due to the nature of
this reference photo, the hair is covering
half of the ear. And we are going to draw the
outer shape of the hair. Okay, we're using the underlying lumas
head as our guide and we're extending the hair line up until roughly where
the hair line is. Her hair is parted right
about here and then it folds back on itself like this. Now when you're drawing yours, I want you to focus more on the outer shape of
the hair first. And then I want you
to start focusing on the different
segments of hair that reside within that outer shape. Okay? These by definition are what they call
contour lines. The outer shape of
the hair is what we are going for here.
Think of it like this. When it comes to the hair on both sides of the lumas head, we want to establish the hair on the outside and then we
want to work our way in. Okay? But it's crucial that we start from
the outside first because this will help us properly gauge the
proportions of the hair. And in retrospect, once we
get to the facial features, it will help us
place those as well. Okay, So just keep that in mind now that we have the outer shape more or less solidified. Right? We know how that hair is sitting and living
on the lumos head. Now we can begin to go in and mess around with the
segments of hair. Segments are the term that I use for the different
sections of hair. Right, when you look at
the reference photos, her hair lays together
in specific groups that comprise the greater whole of the way the hair flows. This is a that you can begin to systematically
understand and draw the hair with an
approach so that you can begin to bring out the way
that hair rests on itself. And in the end, bring out the flow of the hair. Right? Because hair
does many things, but it doesn't really
like to be told what to do necessarily when
you're drawing your hair. We very much want to keep in the back of our
mind that we want the hair to have this
type of flow to it, this type of freedom, right? We don't want to look stiff and rigid because that's
not what this style, at least for this reference
photo, looks like, right? It's long, it's wavy. You can tell that she just brushed her bangs back on
the right side of her face. And if she was to move
her head a certain way, those bangs would fall probably
back towards her face. Just keep that in mind. But this is the
part of the drawing where I really want you to
take your time with it. Okay? Really look at how the hair is laying on
itself and on the head, the contour lines that outer shape of the hair
is step number one. Then step number two is
of course identifying the main segments of hair
as they lay on the head. Then right here is
step number three. Okay, this is where we're
going to go in and we are going to mess with
our line qualities. Now when it comes to
line definitions, there's really only two
that you will hear and use. A lot of that is
a lines quality, which is by definition, how thick or thin a line
is or appears to be. Then there's line weight. Line weight is similar to line quality, but
it is different. Line weight is a lines
saturation, right? It's how light or dark that
line appears on the paper. Now when it comes to line
quality and line weight, they do tend to share
this correlation. Thicker lines, sometimes,
not all the time, tend to have a darker
weight to them. And then thinner lines, again, sometimes not all the time will have a lighter
weight to them. So that is the relationship that those definitions
share and it's a good thing for you
to understand so that when you go to mess around
with your line work, you will understand not
only by definition, what you're doing,
but you'll be able to apply it onto the paper as well. Okay, let's move on
to the next lesson.
4. Draw the Eyes using the Asaro Method: All right, now we
are going to draw the eyes and notice
how in reference to where we had the Lumius
head overlaid on top of the original
reference photo. We now have the So head. We are switching from the Lumius method to the SRro method. Now we are going to refer
to the SRO head model here. The first line is going to be the bottom of the
nose bridge plane, that's this horizontal line. Then we're going to extend the ends of this
horizontal line up. And then at a slight angle, given the curvature
of our subjects face. And we're going to do
that on both sides of the horizontal line
and the tops of these vertical lines plug into the corner of our
subjects eyebrows. This makes it really
easy to sketch in the outer contour lines
of our eyebrows. Right? When it comes to this approach, you want to use
contour lines first. All right? Contour
lines will help you identify if your proportions are the way that you
want them to be. And then moving forward, you can fill in those
contour lines with detail and bring out the character and the realism of your subject. But this is step
number one. All right? We're going to do that on
both sides here, right? Pay attention to the
angle of the eyebrows. Right? Something just like this. Then once we have these
eyebrows established, we then want to sketch in the
temple planes of the face. All right, then right about
here is roughly where the tear ducts of
the subject's eyes live, something just like this. Now what we want
to place is what they call frame lines. Okay? Eyes when drawing with
the sorrow method have three main frame lines. Okay, Here's a frame
line number one. And then we're going to extend this temple plane down
here underneath the hair. And that plugs right in
to frame line number two. All right, because effectively what we're doing is
we're building out the planes of the face and eyes specifically in this
lesson from the top down. Okay, And then we have the third plane line that extends off the corner of
the outside of the eye. And then once we have all
three of those drawn, we then want to connect them. Okay? Frame line number
one to 22 to three. Technically there's four
frame lines, right? There's this fourth one
that plugs into the bottom of the nose bridge plane, but there's three
main ones, okay? And then pay attention to
the shape of the subjects. Okay? Because what
we've done is we have framed the upper eyelid, right? And then once we
have the top drawn, we then want to sketch
in the bottom of the I. This is where we're
going to give the, its basic two dimensional
shape, right? Again, these are
contour lines for the I. Yeah, something
just like that. And then I'm just going
to do a nice light sketch here on the bottom of the eye and that gives the eye a little
bit of body underneath. Yeah, something just like that. I'm just using very
light pressure control for these lines here because the main lines were the ones where we wanted to use a
heavier pressure control. We have those drawn, this is just to give the eye
a little bit of character. But now what we're going
to do is we're going to do the exact same thing on
the far side of the face. Pay attention to
the angle, right? It's going to be
slightly different. We have frame line number one. We have a frame line number two, and then frame
line number three. We're not really going to see it due to the nature
of the angle here, but it's going to live
somewhere right about here. What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to connect these stemming from the inner
tear duct of the far eye. Okay, I'm just going
to pull this line up. You can do nice short poles. If you are unsure
about the placement, go ahead and use a nice
light pressure control. That way, if you need to make an adjustment
with your eraser, by all means do that. And then that way you can make that necessary adjustment
and try again. Okay. So now that those
are all connected, the bottom of the eye would be something, something like this. All right. About like
that. But you can see where those
Asaro planes live. You have the nice light line
that we sketched across, right, to help us frame
where these lines would go. And then of course we have
the brow line which we drew during the Loomis head phase
in lesson one. All right. Use those as your gauge for placing your eyes then
while we're here. Why not? Let's go ahead and draw in the iris on both sides. Something just like that.
There's a little bit of a low value on the corner of the eyes here on both sides. So I'll go ahead
and punch that in. Then I'm just going to outline the pupils and we'll move
on to the next lesson.
5. Draw the Nose using the Asaro Method: Okay, so now that we
have placed the eyes, we want to place the nose, and we already have
the structure that we need to effectively place this nose right here from
our underlying loomis head. We're going to sketch and thicken up this line
right about here, and this is to give us
a good gauge of how wide the nose needs to
be on that bottom plane. And the right here, we're going to start
moving our way up, it's right about there. And then we're going to extend a line up on the
far side as well. When it comes to drawing noses, really the big thing that
you want to place is you want to figure out where the bottom plane
is going to live. Just like this, right? We're
going to pull this line over and we want to pay
attention to the angle, the side right here is going to arc ever so slightly,
just like this. Then it's going to
flatten out a bit in line with the nose line of the underlying Umd and the anchor points
of the lips, right? Something just like
that. And then once we have that established, we can then pull up a little
bit here on the far side of the nose and we can
connect the top of the nose. I'm going to pull that down
from the nose bridge plane. We're going to thicken
this line up a bit. What that's going to do is that's going to bring that nose forward and it's going to push the far side of the
face back a bit. All right, now what we're
going to do is we're going to draw in what is called
the nose ridge plane. Now don't get these
two confused, right. There's the nose ridge plane, which is the plane on the top
of the subject's nose which plugs into the
nose bridge plane, which is the plane between
the subject's eyes. The ridge plugs into the bridge. All right, then once
we have that drawn, we're going to
extend these lines for the nose ridge plane down. If you have any questions about how these lines are
structured in principle, refer to reference number two which has the
SRro head model, because that is what we're
basing this off of, right? That's the approach right there. You can use that head model as a natural guide for when
you're referring to the reference photo and you
can place those planes. Now if you can freehand the
nose more power to you, but if you can't or if you just want to abide by
the principle of the method, then definitely lean into that, a sorrow hit model, okay? It's there to help you not
to hurt you, only help. Now once we have
these planes drawn, we're going to punch
in the nostrils. Then this plane
right here is what is called the slope plane. All right, you have the ridge
plane on top of the nose, and then you have
the slope planes on either side of the nose, which slope down onto
the tops of the cheeks. And then you have
the bottom planes and the nose tip planes, right? Those are the basic planes. Now what you can do is you can go in with an eraser
like I'm doing here. And you can erase these
underlying headlines if you want, just so it makes the
drawing less convoluted, a little bit more simpler as
far as the visuals of it go. But that's pretty
much it for the nose. Let's move on to
the next lesson. And I'm going to show
you how to effectively place the mouth and
the Saro face planes.
6. Draw the Mouth & Face Planes using the Asaro Method: All right, so when it
comes to placing the lips, you want to start by drawing
in the filtrum lines. Okay? The filtrum is
the bit right above the upper lip that extends down from the center of the
bottom of the nose, right? If you've placed your
anchor point for the upper lip in
the correct spot, it'll plug right in
something just like this. You have this line and
you have this line. And what they do is they converge and form
an upside down V, which is what they
call the cupid's bow. The cupid's bow is the top
center of the upper lip. And then to guestimate where the corners
of the mouth are, we're going to look at
the reference photo. We're going to extend
this line down ever so gently and we're going to use a very light pressure
controller here. We want to bring it down
right about here, right? Then on the far
side of the face, we're going to draw
a nice light line from the outer
edge of the far I. We're going to bring that
down right about here. And then you can use those as a guestimation for where the
corners of the mouth reside. We're going to punch
that right there and right there, wonderful. Then once you're
comfortable with where you've placed the
corners of the mouth, we're going to extend a
line from the corner up. And we're going to
plug that right into the cupid's bow, just like that. We're going to do
that on both sides of the face. Something
just like this. I would say that if you're iffy on whether or not your
proportions are accurate, just use a nice light
pressure control in case you need to erase. But once we're comfortable
with that top lip, we're going to split
it into two planes. If you refer to
reference number two, the SRO head model, that upper lip is
split into two planes. Then we're going to
bring the corner of the mouth over, just like this. Then we want to draw
a line right here. Now, I would caution you don't draw a continuous
line, right? Break that line up a
bit and that will just make the top of that bottom lip a little bit more dynamic. Versus if you just
run one smooth line across where it had a
constant quality to it. Don't do that. Break
it up three segments. One then go across the center flat and then drop down and plug into the far
side like that, okay? Now, when it comes
to the bottom lip, on most references that bottom
lip needs to be very soft. Okay? The top lip
is always going to be more prominent
than the bottom lip. Most of the time when we're
sketching our line here, we just want to be very,
very light with it. Okay? We don't want
to connect the line. All right, So that's pretty
much it for the lips. And then we're
going to just split the bottom lip into
three planes, right? Those two plane lines usually align with the Filtrm
lines, just like this. All right. Now what we're
going to do is we're going to place the sorrow
face planes, all right? And what this does is this gives that open space that you
have in your drawing. It gives it structure. All right, like
building a house. We want the walls
to be structured. We don't want them
to be open space. We're going to extend this line off the
corner of the mouth. Then we're going to
go up to the nose. We're going to continue
that line up at an angle. And then we're going to extend this line up and it's going to cross the center of the
eye. Something just like this. Be caring with how you
place these lines, okay? When you're doing it.
Go nice and light. But I want you to try
to pull these lines and see that underlying form that
you are trying to convey. All I don't just arbitrarily throw the lines in there and
make them super straight. Now, you can do
that if you want, but I would say that like when we get to
the hatching phase of this, you really want to look at your reference and try to
understand it on that level. Because the more
you're able to begin to understand how the form of your subject flows
by understanding it at this stage in the drawing
process to frame the face, it'll make your drawing
look that much better towards the end when you go
to hatch it and shade it. Just be aware of that. Now here, that line extended all the way across roughly where
the top of the ear is. And then this last intersection, we're going to bring
this line down. Okay. If you have any questions about where to place
these frame lines, refer to the SRrohead model. Okay. They're all right there. Yeah. Something just like that. And what we're going to do
is we're going to place these sorrow face planes
on both sides of the face. Okay. I know that we can't really see that
far side too much, but it's good practice, right, Believe it or not, when it comes to
drawing portraits, the one angle that you'll probably encounter
more often than not when drawing for clients is going to be the
34 turn angle. Now, will it be a
three quarter angle looking down like this one? Probably not. But who knows? The two angles that people
don't necessarily like are straight on angles
and profile angles, but profile is the
second most popular. The reason why is because a lot of people don't like to
look directly at a camera. That's just the way
it's always been. Ever since the times
of the Renaissance, and painters painting from
monarchs across the world, clients just really like
the three quarter angle. Let's move on to
the next lesson.
7. Initial Hatching & Value Building : All right. So now we're
going to start hatching. Okay? Just like this right
across the forehead here. I'm just doing nice light
poles and I'm trying to be conscious of the spacing
between my hatch marks. I will say that if this is
a little too fast for you, feel free, Go ahead
and pause the class, catch up, and then
simply resume. I've been doing this
for a long time. For me when it
comes to hatching, I have a lot of muscle memory. For me, it's pretty
much second nature. But just like this, I want
you to pay attention to the direction and the length
of each strike of the paper. All right? When it comes to
hatching, it's very simple. One pass right? Hatch, mark, hatch, mark, hatch, mark, hatch, mark, so on and so forth. Each hatch is going to give you one cohesive value across a specific area, just like this. And you can go back
over that area still pulling your hatch
marks in the same direction. What will happen is your value
in that area will lower, just like what I did
for the eyebrows. Now, I would advise you, if you are new to this, when it comes to each
area of the face, simply stick to the
Saro plane lines that we have already
drawn for yourself. Okay? That way you can focus
on one plane at a time. And that will also
give you a hyperfocus without knowing on that
specific area alone. Okay. Like how I'm just dressing up the bottom of the eyes here. I lowered that quality. Now what I'm going
to do is I'm just going down the slope
plane of the nose. Right? Something just like that. And then I'm going to
move on and I'm going to now pull my hatch marks in this direction across
the nose ridge plane. Right. I'm being very aware of the angle that I
am pulling right. Because what this
will do is when your viewer looks
at your drawing, this will subconsciously
allow them to see and understand the flow
of your subjects face. It's a little optical
illusion trick that you can play on
your viewer's eye. Okay, then I'm just going to fill in the
nostril right here, right? I'm going to up that
contrast between my low light portion
of the inside of the nostril and then of course
the actual nose itself. Then I think while we're here, I'm going to thicken
this one up as well. And then. Okay. Yes, just
like this, nice long poles, certain aspects of
your subjects face will require shorter poles than other aspects of the face. But the flow of the face
is constantly important, no matter what part of
it that you are drawing. But a single pass
with your hatch marks is preferable because like
building values in charcoal, you can always go
back in and you can lower that value
more and more, much like with the
graphite medium as well. Well, with sketching like
this, it's no different. Now, you can sketch
and follow along with this class in
whatever medium you will. That's not an issue at all. I'm just saying that
if you're following along with a darker medium
like charcoal or graphite, just be aware of that. Okay? Now what we're doing
is I'm starting from the underlying lumos
head jaw line and I'm pulling up and I'm trying to pull it in that same
general direction. And then right here, what I'm
doing is I'm going to bring my hatch marks a little
closer together. And notice notice
what happens here. That value does lower. Now, this is not cross hatching. Cross hatching is where you
actually cross the axis, like this would be considered
a vertical axis pole. Then if I was cross hatching, I would pull a line
directly opposite of that. Right. And it would
be straight across or slightly at an angle to follow the
contour of the face. You do what you will. I
am going to just hatch on top of my hatch marks because I like the
aesthetic. Right. It's just, it's my preference. But if you want to do
something different, as long as you feel that you
can accomplish the end goal which is varying
ever so slightly, the contrast in value
across the face, then by all means, you
should definitely do that. I'd love to see your project and I appreciate your
interpretation. Yeah, something just like this. We're pulling this
from the bottom of the throat and we're going up. But that is really the key to varying the values
and bringing out the underlying flow
of your subjects face is just understanding
the underlying form, how you pull, and then
bringing your hatch marks closer together
and then layering your hatch marks like
with the upper lip here. I'm just following the
underlying form of the lip. I got my top lip finished
and now I'm going to do the exact same thing on
the bottom of the lip here, and see how I went to one side, and then I came
back on the lip and that value lowered. You
can do that as well. I'm going to do this
on the far side. Yeah. Now, when you actually look
at the reference photo, irises her nostrils
and then her lips are the lowest values
that we find on her face. When it comes to building up
our values for our drawing, we want to mimic that, right? That's how we're
going to bring out the character of the face. Yeah, something just like that. Now let's move on to
the final lesson and we're going to continue to
detail out this portrait.
8. Hair Segments & Final Detail Work: Okay, the final lesson. Now this is where
we're really going to lower the values and bring out the detail
in our portrait. Okay, by this point
in the drawing, you should be very happy
with your proportions. And we can go in and we can start to detail this
out just like this. We're going to fill
in these pupils, and then I'm going to sock in
the irises of the subject. Then I'm going to fill in
the inside of her ear here. Now by lowering the values
in these specific areas, effectively what we are
doing is we are bringing out the contrast between
our highest value, which is complete
white on the paper, and then our lowest value, which is complete black. Or if you're sketching
along with me in green, complete green. There's no break in
between it right here. This is a prime example right here in the
reference photo. Her hair obviously is
blocking the light source. What we want to do is we want to hatch on top of our hatch marks. On top of our hatch marks. What this is doing is this
is lowering the value for us and it's bringing
out the contrast. Essentially, it's bringing
her face forward and it's pushing her hair on the far
side of the face back for us. Okay, and notice what's
happening now that we have this extremely low
value in the drawing. It accentuates by
wake of contrast, every other part of the
drawing that is not that dark. Okay? This is what they call accentuating the
value scale, right? You are using complete white, complete black, or in this
case, complete green. And then every tonal
variation in between. Okay? By doing it this way, your drawing will not look flat. When critics say that
a drawing looks flat, what has happened is the artist, whether they meant to or not, it really depends
on the situation. They did not vary their
values to the fullest extent. When you don't do that, you get a drawing that is
not as dynamic, right? It doesn't pop, it doesn't
jump off of the paper. Now, that's also a
personal preference. You don't have to make
these sections of your portrait that dark
if you don't want to. I just prefer it because that is very much
a principle that I abide by when it comes to sketching or drawing
any portrait. As I just like the
way it looks for me, regardless of what color
I'm sketching portraits in, that is a rule of thumb
that I like to abide by. But if that's not
you, if that's not your style, that
is totally fine. Everyone is different and there's nothing wrong with that. All right, now what we're going to do is I really want to bring out the character
of this hair. I didn't really spend
too much time on the hair in part one of
this three part series. But this one I'm really
going to show you how we can dress this hair out. What I'm doing is I'm highlighting all of
these segments of hair. Now, we did do this
early on in the class, but now what we're doing
is we are streamlining it. I'm really focusing on this
and I'm trying to bring out as much detail in
the hair as I can. This is one of the
things that when you bring out the
segments of the hair, it will significantly
help you in placing the rest of the
detail work of the hair. Because you'll have a
basic framework for exactly how the hair actually
flows on your paper. Say for example, right here, I'm thickening these up
with my line qualities. Remember we talked
about line quality and the difference between
a quality and a weight. So we want to have a variance
like with the value, right? We want to have complete black, to complete white with value. When it comes to line qualities, especially with hair
that is of this texture, we want to have very
thin line qualities. And then we want to
have sections of the hair that have a
very thick quality. Then like how the variance in value will up the contrast
of the image as a whole. The variance in line quality will really make that
hair just jump out. It'll give it that flow
that you're looking for. But you cannot be
afraid to punch in every single one of those
different line qualities. Like I said, remember line
quality and line weight. The two go hand in hand. They're not the same thing, but with a thicker
quality of a line, you can have a
darker line weight. But notice right here, see this. See I'm going in now and
I'm just doing super thin, shorter strikes of the paper. Just like that. And like I said, if this is too fast pause, do your thing, get to
where you're comfortable, and then resume the class. But this is really
where the magic of this type of sketching
approach comes out. As the minutes tick by, the detail work is really
coming out in the sketch. Another thing to
pay attention to, this will come with time, the more you do this, especially
straight hair textures such as this reference. If you look at the very
top of her hair where she parted her hair across
the top of her head up, there is where you're
going to want to have very thin line qualities. Then you'll want to have
thicker line qualities in the segments of hair as
they come down off the top. And then you'll have a lot
of thicker line qualities towards the bottom of the hair, like around the
shoulders and such, if you can abide by that. And always keep
your line qualities thinner towards the top
of a subject's hair, Especially a subject that has straighter hair texture
such as this reference, then your drawing will
be better for it, right? Remember, you want
to make the drawing as dynamic as possible. We can do that by
accentuating our value scale and by accentuating
our line qualities and our line weights. One of the things I love
about drawing hair is that what governs hair
to look a certain way, especially when you're
just sketching like this is the line work is paramount. Now granted, line work is important when it
comes to the face. But how you really bring
out the character of the face is more in the
hatching and the placement of, say, the Saro lines
where the hair is nothing but line
work, that is all it is. It's this massive conglomerate
of different lines. By framing it with
your contour lines. And then framing the
segments of hair. And then varying
your line qualities across the initial
contour lines of the hair and then the different
segments of hair that really will set you
up for success. When it comes to going in and drawing the rest of
these hair lines here. What you can do,
like what I'm doing, is you can go through, because she does have a lot of flyaways. Especially when
you start to look closer at the reference photo, you can just use a nice
light pressure control. You can just put in
like the fly away here and then maybe
a flyaway there. But what I'm doing
is I'm just going through here on the
top of her shoulder. I'm just sticking
up different lines that I should thicken up because you can spend as much time on these
sketches as you want. But I've always been
of the mind that there is such a thing as
overworking a drawing, and that's the last
thing that you want, so don't do that. And if you like the
way that your sketch looks with less line
work in the hair, then absolutely, by all
means, call it a day. Upload your project and
leave your review, right? Yeah, that looks pretty good. Remember, this is part two
of a three part series. Make sure when you
finish part one and part two that you
finish part three as well. And then that way you can get your certificate of completion for all three classes,
which would be awesome. Now, I cannot wait to
see your guys' projects. Make sure you upload your
project to the class and then review
the class as well, so that I can showcase
your project in my monthly newsletter that comes out in the first
half of every month. That's it, That's all. I
hope you enjoyed this one. Stay happy, stay healthy. And remember, never
stop drawing.
Messer Creations, Artist | Author | YouTuber
