How To Draw A Basic Head Construction

I've always loved drawing people and especially portraits. Your art is so inspiring! Do you have any advice on drawing portraits with accurate proportion? What aspects are the most important in portraits, do you think? And what are good exercises? I'm sorry for bombarding you with so many questions! :3

Thank you! There’s one thing about drawing portraits that I don’t think I’ve ever touched on, and it’s the technique of constraining features.  Basically, it becomes easier and more intuitive to rotate the face in 3D space once your mind grasps exactly where the features are located and, furthermore, where they can’t be located.  

I use a weird double trapezoid shape that I’ve depicted below in red to keep track of facial feature placement every single time I draw a face.  It follows the top of the eyebrows, touches the corner of the eye, traces down to the corner of the lips, and finally ends at the bottom of the lips.  

The shape of the constraint will change depending on the person’s features, and it works for every angle of the head.  For me it really internalized where each part of the face was, as well as where it started and ended. It kinda helps moderate your drawings; i.e., you’ll stop drawing features that are wildly misplaced or off-sized.  I don’t literally draw this shape out every time I draw a face, but I see it in my mind’s eye 100% of the time.

If you’re still learning proportions, a good exercise is to grab pictures of people and trace this shape over them (either digitally or with a marker or something) to get an idea of what realistic constraints looks like.  Then go back to studying faces, and constantly check your drawing by tracing along the eyebrows and down to the bottom of the lips to make sure that things aren’t off (e.g., the constraint isn’t terribly asymmetric).  It takes a while to get used to, but it might help you get a good feel for portraiture.  

There’s one other unrelated thing I like to do with faces, and if you’ve seen a lot of my pics you’ve already picked up on it.  If you kinda add some shading to the area on the cheek just below the eye and down to the nose, I think it adds a decent amount of depth to a face.  Don’t go overboard of course but there’s another little tip that could be of use.

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A Tutorial Masterpost

I said that I’d show some tutorials I have saved up to someone, but decided that I’d just go ahead and post most of what I have stored away and create a sort of masterpost out of it. (I figure it’ll help me just as much since, as of now, they’re all pretty scattered between my Tumblr and bookmarks)

A lot of these are hosted on my personal Tumblr, but I don’t change my url so it’s pretty safe to bookmark them there (and not have to worry about the url changing) if you don’t wish to reblog them yourself for whatever reason.

Feline tutorials:

Basic domesticated cat tutorial

The domestic cat body

Improving upon (lion) anatomy

Realistic lion faces tips

Big cat paw tips

Canine vs. feline - paws and legs

Beginner feline tutorial

Guide to big cats

Feline comparison

Canine vs. feline - facial anatomy

Canine vs. feline - chest anatomy

Guide to little cats

Big cat eyes (could work for other eyes)

Canine tutorials:

Basic wolf anatomy

Skeleton notes on wolf legs

The wolf skeleton as a whole

The wolf skull and teeth

Wolf paw tips

Basic canine poses

Canine ears and chest

Drawing realistic wolves

Basic wolf tutorial

Wolf paw tutorial

Paw pad tips

Wolf skeleton and muscles

Wolf fur direction

Canine vs. feline - paws and legs

Canine vs. feline - facial anatomy

Canine vs. feline - chest anatomy

And this is just an excellent DA for wolf reference images

Avian tutorials:

Bird wing anatomy applied on humanoids

Bird wing tutorial (lots of underrated tips)

Varying bird wing structure

Basic owl anatomy

Bird wing vs. bat wing vs. pterodactyl wing vs. human arm

Bird wings and flight

Various bird wings

Human(oid) tutorials:

Hand tips and reference

Simplifying human anatomy

Feet and shoes tutorial

Bird wing anatomy applied on humanoids

A guide to movement: flexibility

A male shoulder study

Altalamatox face tutorial 

Male legs reference

The human hand

Male vs. female waist

Excellent expressions tut

Understanding anatomy part 1 (follow desc. links for more)

Painting skin

Simplifying hands

More simplified hands

Pose tutorial

Varying the female figure

Profile proportions

Expression tutorial

Virtual lighting studio

Breaking up the male torso

Male torso anatomy in use

Simplifying the human foot

Various facial and body shapes reference

Drawing the nose

Female anatomy patterns

Human mouths

Breaking down the human nose

How to draw the ear

More hand(y) tips

Neck and torso tut

Jawline and kissing tip

Yet another hands tutorial

Male torso in motion

The human head at various angles

Variation of colour throughout the skin

Excellent action and couple references

Advice on eyes

Feet reference drawings

Nose shapes

The human skull and face

Facial features

Portrait lighting cheat sheet

Animating dialogue (mouth movement)

A kissing tutorial

The fist

Various athletic builds

Various types of hair

Proportional height of different positions

Expressions photo references

The hand in motion

Skintone palettes

Semi-realistic eye tutorial

Male muscle reference

The human body in perspective

The human head at various angles

Painting a realistic eye

Arm shape and muscles

Animal feet on a human figure

Hand poses

The face in profile

Skin tutorial

Body type diversity

Drawing hair

Muscles in the neck and face

A beginner’s guide to knees

Another ladies tutorial

Breakdown of lips

Blocked out human faces

Practice figure drawing (animals as well)

A neat arm trick

Excellent ear anatomy tutorial

Fullbody proportions tutorial

Over the shoulder poses

Male torso photo reference

Detailed arm muscle drawings

Guide to human types

Dragon tutorials (and bat wings):

Anatomy of the Western dragon

Dragon wing tips

Dragon wing tutorial

Dragon anatomy

Dragon tutorial

Equine tutorials:

Basic horse (back) reference

The equine skeleton

Horse anatomy and pointers

A good, large collection of horse stock references

Skeleton of a horse and its rider

Horse hooves

Cervine tutorials:

Basic deer anatomy

Deer skeleton drawing

Deer skull reference

Deer musculature

Deer skeleton

Ursine tutorials:

Fantastic bear anatomy/poses references

Basic bear structure

Bear anatomy tutorial

Miscellaneous animal tutorials:

Sheep vs. goats

Background and objects tutorials:

Griffsnuff background tut part 1 (second in desc.)

Tree tutorial

Realistic gems tut

Water tutorial

General water tutorial

Drawing crystals

Drawing bows

Painting rocks

Clothing tutorials:

Fabric tutorial

Clothing folds part 1 (second in desc.)

Drawing hoods

Drawing jeans

Hat on human figure reference

Armor

More hat on figure references

Different shirt collars

Colour palette turtles

General painting, drawing, and style tips:

Altalamatox digital painting walkthrough

Simple fur tutorial

Realism painting tutorial (human subject)

Excellent colour tutorial

Painting a wolf (good fur painting visual)

Photoshop brushes tut

Basics of Photoshop tutorial

Another digital painting tutorial

Common digital painting mistakes

Colour and light

Soft cel-shading tutorial

Various types of hair

Colour tips and the mood it expresses

Composition tips

Lighting and colour tips

Shadows

Another composition tut

Simple colouring via overlay

From paper to digital

Painting gold

Hope these help!

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hi! since u mentioned dreads earlier, i thought it would be a good time to ask if you have any tips on drawing dreadlocks!! i'm doing my best but it doesn't always turn out how i want it too, so any advice would be helpful!!

I use a lot of shorthand to draw krav fast, but here’s a loose tutorial for how i do natural dreadlocks. 1.) Draw your boy. Indicate the hairline so you know where to start. 2.) Use straight lines to indicate what direction you want the strands to hang and fall. 3.) Draw bumpy lines over the straight lines. Consider how thick you want the strands to actually be, and how they rest on the head. 

4.) Use short curved lines to indicate where the strands twist off from the scalp and where the strand ends, curving to kind of a point. 5.) Gradually build off the individual strands from the mass of hair. You can also draw a bit of fuzz here and there, depending on how neatly twisted/kept the dreads are. 6.) erase small sections and at jewelry/charms at leisure.

Final step: color the boy.

Les’ get organic, cuz bones should be insects.

Also , hip dips <3

The way you draw men is really good, I noticed in your post where you drew some of the trolls as gems. How do you go about constructing a male body? What's your sketching process? You also give Eridan an interesting face shape to accommodate his glasses. I'm very curious about your sketch process and your art in general!

Thank you!

I scribbled a quick thing to show you how I generally think when I draw… Disclaimer, my style is quite stylized, so in no way is my art accurate to real life nor should be used as a source material for accurate anatomy. 😂 Rather, this is a tutorial on how I conceptualize the human body when I draw it…

Usually when i draw bodies (not just masculine types), I usually conceptualize the torso into three “chunks.” What’s important about how to conceptualize these though, is understanding the volumetric shapes these take on and also where these chunks “end.”

Below is an example of my take of a muscular body type with a strong triangular silhouette. The goal below was to emphasize on a strong, confident, and yet also appealing stature. I also put my emphasis on things I find personally attractive lol \o/

The red area encompasses the general shoulder and breast area.

The green area is an indicator for the rib cage. (In some instances it would be better to draw the rib cage first because breasts overlap the ribcage.)

The blue area encompasses the rest of the stomach area. Technically the pelvic bone rises a bit higher into this area too, but for the sake of simplification to understand the basic shapes didn’t draw it in the above example.

Here’s how it generally applies to some other body types!

I don’t always draw like this sometimes, but i think it’s a good start on how to conceptualize the body into simpler shapes.

Also, for much more lanky body types, I tend to simplify them moreso since they don’t need as much definition on muscle structure.

Please do remember it’s better to understand how to simplify the human body after doing studies of anatomy from real life!! I can’t emphasize enough how important studies are

As for how I draw faces, I’ll save that for topic for a rainy day 😂 Hope this helps!

ahh im sorry if youve gotten this before but could you do a tutorial on how the head connects to the neck/neck connects to the shoulders?? i saw a small tutorial on shoulders but it was more about how to draw than than how to connect them to the head and the rest of the body u_u

a lot of people asked about necks but i don’t  much to say so i covered a little of the muscles too HERE”S A MORE DETAILED muscle diagram if you’re interested! don’t overwork the neck muscles bc in a lot of people they actually don’t rly show up at all ALSO I tend to draw longer necks out of habit ,some people have shorter necks

REAL LIFE REFS ARE THE BEST GO STARE AT SOME NECKS 

When it comes to textured hair there’s many styles, here some I’ve seen at powwows. Braided locs have to be my favorite style so far 💖

Reminder braids are not a universal hairstyle between tribes! I’m coming from the perspective of Great Plains tribes. I just thought I might share what braided hair means to my community and people. I see people trying to make ocs or redesigns of characters who are native but don’t actually represent us too good. Reminder to always research a tribe before making a character learn their protocols and at least try to learn something new! 🌸💖🍇

I just wanna say I love our hair! It means so much to us please take care of it🥺💖

Your art is amazing in all aspects! It's very inspiring! My sister and I both adore your Morrowind drawings especially.

However one thing about your art which has left me in awe is how 3 dimensional it is. "It's like you can hold them" as my sister says.

I've been trying to improve this aspect of my drawing but it's very overwhelming. I don't know what to do and what to learn. Any tips or advice in this regard would be greatly appreciated. Like what do I even learn? Anatomy? Perspective? Shape design?

Thank you very much💖

AHHHH this is such a kind thing to say, thank you so much ;; ❤️ i don't know what to say,, but i'll try my best to explain how i go about drawing!!

from my perspective, what really helps develop a sense of structure and three-dimensionality is breaking shapes down to simplified forms, take this maav sketch as an example:

breaking down objects into cylinder-like and rouded shapes provides a good visualization of volume and how an object moves and rotates in a three dimensional space! so yes, you were right!! structurization and perspective are crucial to learn along with anatomy. here's how i like to do it:

making grid-like structure studies like these helps me with shading and rendering later - think of it as some kind of a preview which shows you where exactly will the volumes intersect, curve, bend etc i hope i was able to answer your question and best of luck in your drawing!! much love :) 💖💖

Hi there this is a psa by your local mixed kid

Mixed rep in the media as a whole is kinda a fucking disaster so I'm definitely encouraging people to write more diverse mixed race characters!!! That being said give this handy dandy little guide a read to make sure you have a basic idea of what you're doing. And also. Y'know. Maybe dont make your mixed characters nonhuman. Just a thought

EDIT: I put latina instead of Filipina for Vanessa Hudgens, that's my mistake and I'm truly sorry about it. PLEASE reblog this fixed version instead