How to Draw Faces for Beginners – SIMPLE

Learn How to Draw / October 24, 2017 / 77 Comments

Here’s a quick and easy method for beginners to draw male and female faces. In this tutorial, I’ll draw 2 basic faces and then I’ll demonstrate how some easy modifications can affect the overall look of the face.

This tutorial was requested by Wendy Nelson. Thanks Wendy!

Tools:

HB pencil
Kneaded Eraser (for lifting graphite in layers)
Plastic Eraser (for erasing things completely)
Canson Sketch Paper

Try to sketch very lightly so you can easily erase mistakes as you go along. This will also be helpful for the last part of the tutorial where we’ll swap out facial features to play with the way our characters appear. I used a 2B for this tutorial so you can clearly see what I’m doing, however, I recommend using an HB or harder pencil grade.

How to Draw a Male Face Easy

Step 1: Draw a Circle

Draw a circle and then make a line through the center vertically and horizontally. Try to keep your construction lines as light as possible. If you can’t draw a good circle, don’t worry! Trace a round object such as a cup or a roll of duct tape.

Step 2: Draw a Line for the Chin

To find out where to draw the chin, use your ruler or pencil and finger to measure half of the circle’s diameter (from the bottom of the circle to the horizontal line), then transfer your measurement to the bottom of the circle and draw a line for the chin.

Step 3: Draw the Cheeks and Jawline

Draw the cheeks and jawline by connecting chin to the circle. Don’t forget to keep your lines light. We’re going to give the face more definition later. The lighter your lines are, the easier it will be to erase and make changes.

Important: Before we move onto the next step, erase the horizontal line inside of the circle.

Step 4: Draw Facial Construction Lines

Through the center of the head, draw a vertical and horizontal line.

Split the bottom section of the face in half and then in half again.

Do the same thing for the top section of the face.

These lines are for the eyes, nose, lips and hair.

Step 5: Draw the Eyes and Eyebrows

On the line labelled eyes, split the face into 5 equal sections. Make sure you take the entire width of the head into account.

Note: Thanks to Pranab Mahajan for reminding me to add this little detail – If you find it difficult to split the face into 5 equal sections, measure the width of the head using a ruler and divide your number by 5.

Example: If the widest part of the head is 6cm, divide it by 5 to get 1.2cm. Then split the head into sections of 1.2cm each.

Draw your eyes in the appropriate spaces. Click here for a detailed tutorial on drawing eyes.

Step 6: Draw the Nose

Before we draw the nose, we’ll need some boundary lines. Draw a line coming down from the corner of each eye and stopping at the line labelled “nose”.

Let’s draw the nose within these boundaries. For a medium length nose, draw it above the nose line.

Learn how to draw a nose: blog version, video version

Step 7: Draw the Lips

We’ll need some boundary lines for the lips as well. Draw a boundary line coming down from the center of each eye and stopping at the line labelled “lips”.

Draw a triangle directly under (touching) the nose and ending on the “lip” line.

Learn how to draw lips using my triangle method: blog version, video version

Step 8: Draw the Hair

Draw the hairline by creating a very angular shape that is well defined.

I like to draw the top hairline between these 2 lines.

Once that’s complete, draw the rest of the hair. To give his hair more volume, draw your outlines further away from the head, but make sure the distance is somewhat consistent or else the head shape may look unrealistic.

Step 9: Draw the Ears

Roughly between the eyes and nose, draw the ears.

Step 10: Complete His Face

Give the cheeks, jawline and chin some more definition. I gave him a sharp jawline with a dimpled chin. To make someone look skinnier, you can draw some subtle lines to shape the cheeks.

Finally, give him a thick neck and add the shoulders as well.

I erased the construction lines to show you his face without obtructions. You can keep these construction lines to aid you at the end of this tutorial when we swap out facial features to transform our characters!