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In this step-by-step tutorial, I’ll show you how to draw curls in 7 easy steps! Grab a pencil, paper, and eraser, and follow along with me :)
Here are the tools I’m using, but you can use a regular school pencil (HB pencil) and any eraser of your choice.
Tools I Used:
3B Pencil
Blending Stump
Kneaded Eraser
Soft Tissue Paper
Canson Drawing Paper (If you want smooth drawings, look for paper labeled as “fine tooth” or smooth, but make sure it’s thick so you can work it)
Step 1: Draw Boundary Lines For Your Curls
Start by drawing a pair of vertical lines that taper at the bottom. These will serve as boundary lines for the hair. The tightness of each curl ring depends on how far apart these two lines are. You can experiment with that.
Step 2: Draw the Front Sections of Your Curl
Let’s shape the curl while keeping our strokes within the boundary lines. Draw thick sections of hair that are spaced well apart. Slant them all in one direction. At the bottom, draw the end of your lock of hair by tapering the hair to a point.
Step 3: Draw the Back Sections of Your Curl
To draw the back part of your curl, draw similar-looking sections of hair that are connected to the ends of the ones you just drew. The dotted lines in my example above show you the part where the hair is hidden from view (erase these before you shade).
Before we move on to the shading portion, make sure your curl has rounded corners instead of sharp corners like the example below:
Drawing your curl like this will make it look flat instead of spirally
Also, make sure to lighten your construction lines before shading so they don’t show through in the end.
Step 4: Add a Light Layer of Shading
You can erase the two vertical boundary lines before shading.
Grab your pencil and lightly shade one section of hair at a time, working from the outside in. Use the flat side of your pencil to avoid scratchy shading. We want to make the area going down the center of the curl appear lighter in value so it will look 3D. When you approach this lighter area of hair, flick your pencil up quickly to create a gradual change in value.
Once you’re done, you can blend your shading so it’s smooth, using any blending tool of your choice, such as a soft tissue or blending stump. Blend in the same direction you shaded.
Step 5: Add Strands of Hair to the Front Sections of Your Curl
Now we’re going to draw individual strands of hair over the top of our shading. Sharpen your pencil, using the tip to draw this time, and use more pressure to create darker lines. In each section of hair, start your stroke along the outside and flick your pencil in toward the middle.
Now that my drawing is darker, you can more clearly see the pattern of light and shadow – each section of hair is lightest down the center. The transition between light and dark values should be gradual unless you’re drawing wet or extremely shiny hair.
Step 6: Add Strands of Hair to the Back Sections of Your Curl
Let’s work on the back sections of our curl in the same way we did in step 5, using the tip of our pencil to create many individual strands of hair. To make our drawing look 3D, try to darken this section more than the front section.
Step 7: Add Final Details to Your Curl!
Once you’re done, check to see if you’d like to make any tweaks to your drawing. I added some stray hairs so my drawing looks more natural instead of rigid and predictable.
If you’d like to learn more about how to draw long curls, such as how to draw loose curls, changing the curl direction, or how to layer many curls on a head of hair for your character drawings, plus many more tips, please refer to my video tutorial below!
Video Tutorial: How to Draw Curls
Thanks for drawing with me! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on drawing realistic curly hair and hope you share it with your friends :)
Leave a comment down below if you have any questions!
Darlene created RFA In 2013 with the goal of sharing simple yet detailed drawing tutorials with other artists on the world wide web. She is a self taught pencil portrait artist and Youtuber.
Hey, I’m Darlene and in this tutorial, I’m going to explain the Loomis method for drawing the face/head from the side view. It took me a long time to understand and be able to draw the Loomis heads properly, so my goal with this tutorial is to make each step as easy to understand as possible and bridge any gaps. I also added some methods of my own.
This is part 2 in a 4 part series on drawing the Loomis heads. ** You do NOT need to go through the series in order**, but doing so will help you understand how to draw a face from any angle that you want. It’s a very useful skill to have for portrait artists!
Part 1 covered the head from the front and can be viewed via this link.
Drawing Tools
These are the tools I’m going to use. But feel free to use just a regular school pencil and eraser.
If you already went through Part 1 of the series, these steps will look quite familiar to you. If not, don’t worry, you can still draw a face from the side view using these detailed steps.
Important Note: Some text will be marked with an asterisk “*”, meant for those of you who are going through this series in order. The text here may not make sense for people following this series out of order.
Draw Construction Lines for a Head in the Side View
Start with a circle. Then draw a straight vertical and horizontal line through the very center. I’m using a colored pencil so the instructions don’t get too confusing, but pencil crayon isn’t easy to erase, so I would recommend you use your graphite pencil and sketch very lightly so you can erase the construction lines easily once you’re done.
* Since we’re drawing a head from the side now (facing to the left), the middle line that runs down the middle of the face is going to be located on the left side of our circle. The vertical line is now called the ear line.
Extend your middle line straight down, creating the front of the face.
Find Where the Facial Features Go
The horizontal line is called the brow line, since that is where the eyebrows will be drawn (but more on that later). To find where the rest of his facial features need to go, we’re going to split the ear line into 6 equal spaces. Use small tick marks.
The topmost tick will mark the hairline. The bottommost tick will mark the nose line.
The space between each facial feature should be equal. So to figure out where the chin line goes, take a measurement from brow to nose and add it below for the chin line. You should now have 4 facial feature lines that are spaced evenly apart.
The eyes are going to be located about 1/3 of the way down from the brow to nose. For the lips, make a line a little higher than the midway point between the nose and chin lines.
Draw the Final Construction Lines
Draw a circle that spans from the hair line to nose line to represent the flat side of his head (aka the side plane).
* Remember when we chopped off the sides of his head in the front view? This is what it looks like from the side.
To complete the head shape, draw the jawline which runs from the bottom of the side plane to the chin.
To draw his neck, let’s first make the head shape less circular, as I’ve done above.
To draw the back of his neck, align your pencil with the nose line and base of his cranium. Halfway between the front of his face to the ear line, draw the front part of his neck.
Let’s Draw his Facial Features from the Side… Finally!
Now that we’ve constructed the head shape and know where his facial features should go, let’s use these as guidelines to draw our details on top!
Let’s draw the ear between the brow line and nose line, placing it in the bottom right quadrant of the head. It’s actually slanted back instead of perfectly vertical, so draw a slant that looks like a forward slash “/” before we actually draw the ear.
I think the ear shape is kind of similar to an oval, so if you want to have a rough guideline to draw within, create a faint oval.
Using the slanted line and oval as loose guidelines, you can more easily draw an ear. You can follow the steps as pictured above to draw the ear. You can see that I’ve now switched to drawing with a graphite pencil. At this point, I usually draw darker to differentiate the drawing from my construction lines.
To learn how to draw and shade an ear with more detailed steps, please visit this tutorial.
To draw the brow bone and forehead, start your pencil stroke just below the brow line, creating a deep convex curve. Extend your pencil stroke upward to create the forehead. I gave him a forehead that slants inward, but you can make it steeper or have it jut outward if you prefer. Try not to follow the circle shape, otherwise, his head will look too round. Stop when you reach the hair line.
Below the brow, you can draw a light triangle (the simplified version of a nose to use as a guideline to draw a more detailed one). Experiment with different shapes to get the nose shape you prefer. The base of the triangle should rest along the nose line.
Use the triangle as a rough guide to draw a more detailed nose shape. I’ve provided some examples above. You can manipulate the triangle to get some very interesting nose shapes.
After you’ve drawn the nose bridge, tip, and septum, add the wing of his nose to the right side of the middle line (the vertical line that marks the front of his face). For the nostril, draw a slight curve between the tip and wing of his nose.
To learn how to shade a nose, check out this tutorial.
Time to draw his mouth. I’ve included some steps above, showing the order I recommend for drawing the mouth. On the lip line, without going too far past the wing of his nose, draw a small tick to mark the corner of his lips. Define the opening of the mouth by drawing a wavy line. Then draw the top and bottom lip, making sure they are drawn on the left side of the middle line (the vertical line that marks the front of his face).
To learn how to draw an underbite, overbite, or normal bite, visit this tutorial.
Below the lip, bring your pencil stroke out to create a round, full chin, instead of following the construction lines too closely.
Then use the construction lines to draw the neck, jawline, and the rest of his head shape in more detail. Don’t forget the adam’s apple along the front of his neck :) For his head shape, try to deviate slightly from the circular construction line. I’ve made it so the back of his head is a little pointy.
Let’s draw his eyebrow along the brow line. I like to align the eyebrow arch with the side plane (the small circle we drew within the largest circle)
To draw the eye, first, draw an imaginary line going up from the wing of his nose. We’ll draw his eye to the right of that.
When referencing the numbered steps in the image above, the red line marks the imaginary line drawn from the wing of his nose and the blue line marks the eye line.
Draw the eyelids using a shape similar to a rotated “V”, but more curved.
Then add the eyeball using a curved line.
The eyelid crease can be drawn using a curve that is similar to the shape of the top eyelid.
Add eyelashes if you would like.
How to Draw Hair from the Side View
Time to draw his hair! Start along the hair line and draw hair-like strokes toward the right to frame his forehead until you reach the side plane. If you want to draw a large forehead, draw above the hair line. For a small forehead, draw below the hair line. Follow the side plane down toward the eyebrow, but don’t get too close! Angle your stroke down toward the ear. When you get to the brow line, create his sideburn, and then end your stroke near the top of the ear.
Continue your stroke on the right side of his ear, working down the nape of his neck.
Looking at the head on the right in the image above, you’ll notice how the hair highlighted in red is close to his head in certain areas and further away in other areas. The closer the hair is to the head shape, the shorter the hair is and vice versa. Use this knowledge to design his hairstyle the way you want. I made his hair mostly short but gave it much volume at the top.
Once you’re happy with how the face/head looks, erase your faint construction lines (what I’ve drawn in blue pencil crayon). And that’s how you draw a head from the side view using the Loomis method. If you want to learn how to draw 3 more head positions, please navigate to those tutorials using the links below.
Darlene created RFA In 2013 with the goal of sharing simple yet detailed drawing tutorials with other artists on the world wide web. She is a self taught pencil portrait artist and Youtuber.
Hey, I’m Darlene and in this tutorial, I’m going to explain the Loomis method for drawing a face from the front view. It took me a long time to understand and be able to draw the Loomis heads properly, so my goal with this tutorial is to make each step as easy to understand as possible and bridge any gaps. I also added some methods of my own.
This method allows you to not only draw faces from the front view but also from ANY view that you want.
This is PART 1 in a 4 part series where I’ll show you step-by-step how to draw 4 different head positions.
Drawing Tools
These are the tools I’m going to use. Feel free to use a regular school pencil and eraser though.
How to Draw a Face from the Front View (Loomis Method)
Let’s start with the easiest angle. The front view. I’m using a colored pencil crayon for all the construction lines so you can still see the construction of the head after the drawing is complete. Keep in mind that pencil crayon cannot be erased easily, so if you’re following along, you might want to use just a regular graphite pencil for this construction process.
Draw Construction Lines for a Head in the Front View
The first step is to draw a circle. To do so, limit the movement in your fingers and wrist and instead, move your elbow and shoulder. Just hover over your sketchbook, creating circular motions. When the movement looks and feels right, lower your pencil to create a faint circle. It may take a few tries and that’s perfectly normal!
I’ve gone over my circle to make it dark so the instructions are more clear. But try to keep your construction lines very light.
The next step is to create a vertical line (called the middle line) and a horizontal line (called the brow line) that runs through the very center of your circle.
Since the side of the human head is more flat, let’s cut off the sides of our circle. To cut off just the right amount, split the vertical line (aka middle Line) into 6 equal spaces.
Draw a straight horizontal line through the top and bottom-most tick.
Where each horizontal line intersects with the circle, draw a straight vertical line:
You should now have a square within your circle.
I can’t easily erase pencil crayon, so for now, just imagine that the left and right sides of the circle are gone.
Determine Where each Facial Feature Goes
Extend the middle line down so we can mark where all his facial features go.
We already know where the eyebrows are going to go, so next, we’ll need to figure out the placement of the hairline, nose, and chin. In the process of cutting off the sides of our circle, we’ve actually created the hair line and nose line already.
For an average male face, all of these features will be spaced evenly apart, so to find the boundary of the chin, take a measurement from hair to brow OR brow to nose to find the distance between the nose and chin. Make a small tick to mark the spot:
Now we have 4 horizontal feature lines that are spaced evenly apart.
To complete our head shape, we’ll need to draw the jawline. Extend the sides of the head down a little and then taper your pencil stroke in toward the chin. You can adjust the chin width based on your preference. For older males, I like to make the chin very wide with sharper angles. For a younger male with softer features, I like to draw the chin more narrow and smooth out the corners.
Now we have a complete head shape!
But there are two more feature lines to draw – the eye line and lip line!
The eye line is located about 1/3 of the way down from brow to nose.
And then between the nose and chin, there’s the lip line. It looks like it’s halfway between the nose and chin, but it’s actually just a little closer to the nose.
Time to Draw the Actual Facial Features
Let’s start adding his features now! Now that we’ve constructed the head shape and know where each facial feature should go, let’s use these as guidelines to draw our details on top!
Draw his ears along the side of the head, positioned between the brow and nose.
It may help to think of the ear as a shape that resembles half of a heart ❤️.
Introducing the Skull and Planar Head
Drawing the rest of his facial features can be very intimidating. So before we actually draw any of them, it’s good to learn where each feature fits on the face, then we can worry about how to draw each one.
A good way to approach this is to first practice drawing the human skull because it helps us understand the structure beneath all that skin.
Study and draw the skull from all sorts of angles. There are many apps and online references you can use to study from.
You can also learn how to draw muscles of the face, which is covered in Andrew Loomis’ book.
Learning how to draw a planar head will also come in handy. It’s basically a blocky, simplified version of the head. When you practice drawing this, it helps you better visualize where the facial features go. And it will give you a better grasp of the subject in a 3-dimensional space, giving you an understanding of how to draw the subject from different angles, which will help you as you move on in this drawing series.
It takes some time to learn this, but if you put in the time, your drawing skills will level up dramatically.
You can go right ahead and actually draw the planar head over your drawing very lightly to block out the different sections from one another. There are many ways to draw a planar head, as you can tell from a quick Google search. The Loomis one is a little different from what I’m doing now.
I like to lightly sketch just the face section and ignore the rest of the head, but when you’re practicing it’s probably a good idea to draw the whole planar head.
Please refer to the book for more info on this.
I’ll walk you through the specific placement of each facial feature as I draw them. With the skull and planar head references, you can probably already vividly picture where the features go.
Along the brow line, let’s draw his eyebrows. Slant them up at the ends. Leave a little space between the tail of each eyebrow and the side of the head.
Use your planar head sketch as guidelines to help with drawing the nose. The nose should sit on the nose line and be balanced along the middle line that runs vertically down the face.
I won’t go into much detail on how to draw each individual facial feature because I have separate tutorials for each one already. Click here to find all my free facial feature tutorials.
To place the eyes, draw a vertical line from the wing of the nose all the way up to the eyeline. That marks the inner corner of each eye.
The width of each eye should be about the same width as the nose.
For each eye, you can draw a trapezoid-like shape, then round off the corners to create something that looks more like an eye.
Position his eyes right above the eyeline.
Add an eyelid crease above each eye – It’s just a line that roughly follows the eye shape.
To draw the lips, I’m going to use a different method from Andrew Loomis.
Where your lip line intersects with the middle line, draw a U-shaped curve. It can be pointy, shallow, wide, or long. To either side, draw the corners of the mouth using small ticks, then connect the dots creating a wavy line in the shape of your choice.
Draw the outline for his top lip, creating an M-like shape. The bottom lip is like a very wide and shallow U shape.
How wide should the mouth be? It’s up to you, but I like to draw it a little wider than the nose.
Let’s draw his cheeks next.
If you want to really define his cheeks but don’t know where to start, it helps to visualize his skull. Also, knowing where the cheekbones end will help you understand which areas you can hollow out.
For his jaw, use your construction lines as a rough guide, softening the harsh angles. I’m giving him a dimpled chin.
For his neck, draw it as thick as you’d like.
I’m using red here so you can clearly see what I’ve added since the last step
Let’s draw the outline for the top and sides of his head. Round off the sharp corners and make the sides of his head come out a little more than the blue construction lines.
How to Draw Hair in the Front View
To draw his hair, you can use the hair line as a reference point, which will give him a medium-sized forehead. Draw above or below the hair line to give him a larger or smaller forehead.
Where the hair line intersects with the vertical middle line, I’ve drawn a dip to give him what’s called a cowlick. The boundary of his hair along the two sides of his forehead angle in slightly toward his eyebrows and then out toward each ear.
You can leave it like this so he has a buzz cut (head pictured on the left) or give his hair some length and volume (head pictured on the right). To do that, first select where you want his hair parting line to be (where he parts his hair). The parting line is the transition point between where his hair sweeps left and right. Start drawing his hair from that point and give him any hairstyle you want. To give his hair more volume, draw it further away from his head.
Once you’re happy with how your drawing looks, erase the faint construction lines and that completes our head drawn from the front view!
We’re going to use the exact same method to draw the last 3 heads in PART 2-4 of this series, so you’re going to see the same patterns come up over and over again, but from different angles!
I hope you enjoyed this drawing tutorial! If your drawing didn’t turn out the way you wanted the first time, don’t give up. It takes some practice and some patience. You can do it!!
Use the links below to navigate through the rest of the tutorials in this series on drawing faces from any angle using the Loomis method.
Darlene created RFA In 2013 with the goal of sharing simple yet detailed drawing tutorials with other artists on the world wide web. She is a self taught pencil portrait artist and Youtuber.
Hey, I’m Darlene and in this tutorial, I’ll break down how to draw a realistic male eyebrow into simple steps.
Tools I Used
I’m going to use a cheap 2B dollar store pencil, but you can use an HB pencil if you prefer, I’m also using a kneaded eraser, which you can learn how to make here and I’ll use a regular, soft facial tissue for blending.
0.5mm 2B Lead Dollarstore Mechanical Pencil (Studio brand)
Note: If you get stuck on any of the steps, you can refer to the video version of this tutorial.
If you also want to draw the eye that I’m using for this tutorial, you can follow my detailed Youtube tutorial here.
Okay, let’s get started!
Decide on Eyebrow Height
We first need to figure out where to draw the eyebrow above our eye. I’m going to place mine close to the eye, but you can play around with the height to see what you prefer.
For males, I like to draw the eyebrow closer to the eye. Above is an example of a masculine and feminine eye with different eyebrow heights for reference.
Outline the Eyebrow
Once you’ve decided on the eyebrow height, let’s create a few rough guidelines to help us construct the eyebrow outline. These don’t need to be exact.
Navigate a small distance outside the left of the eye, move your pencil straight up and draw a very light tick to mark the spot. This is roughly where your eyebrow will begin.
Navigate to the right corner of the eye, go straight up, add a light tick mark. That will be the point where the eyebrow arches.
Angle outward from the right corner of the eye for the tail of your eyebrow.
Okay, now that we have some guidelines in place, we can outline the shape of our eyebrow:
You can create a number of shapes using the guidelines that we just drew to help you. I’m going to go with something quite angular, not too curvy to make the eye look more masculine (Example C).
Instead of drawing a solid outline, use tiny pencil strokes that flow in the same direction that our eyebrow hairs point, that way, they’ll blend in and just disappear as we continue to draw.
Use small, light strokes. Don’t worry too much about how they look, we mainly want to focus on the eyebrow shape that we’re making.
Tweak the shape however you’d like before moving on to the next step.
Understanding Eyebrow Hair Direction
To simplify the rest of the eyebrow drawing process, I’m dividing the eyebrow into two zones. Let’s call the bottom half zone 1 and the top half, zone 2.
In zone 1, the hair mostly points up and toward the tail of the eyebrow. At the beginning of the eyebrow, they can even point the opposite way.
Zone 2 is simple, they mostly point down toward the tail of the eyebrow.
In the middle section (between the two zones), they’ll point toward the tail of the eyebrow while following the same path as the boundary line.
Let’s keep that in mind as we draw.
You can draw a boundary line between zone 1 and 2 using hair-like strokes starting from the top left to the bottom right. Since everyone’s eyebrow is different, your boundary line can look way different from mine:
Search up some eyebrow pictures on Google and you might find a distinct line that runs through the eyebrow, separating it into two zones like example A which I find quite common, like example B where zone 1 is most prominent, or even one like example C where zone 2 is most prominent.
ZONE 1: Draw the Bottom Half of the Eyebrow
Here are some tips before we start actually drawing the eyebrow.
To make the eyebrow look as natural as possible, make sure not to draw the hair in a perfectly straight path and instead stagger them, creating a more random pattern.
Another thing to remember is to avoid drawing them all straight and parallel to each other, and instead, slightly change the angle or the curve. The example above is a little exaggerated.
The last thing to remember is to keep your pencil sharp at all times to make sure each hair is thin. Flick your pencil up at the end of each stroke to feather it out.
Let’s start drawing the hair in zone 1, creating a row along the very bottom. If you make a mistake, just pinch your kneaded eraser to a fine point and dab the mistake away gently.
Once you finish the first row of hair, move up slightly and add a second row, then a third, and so on.
Keep doing this until you reach the boundary line. As you get closer to the boundary line, you’ll want to start angling your hairs or curving them until they’re pointing in the same direction as the hairs we drew along the boundary of zone 1 and 2.
Draw more or less hair depending on how full or sparse you want your eyebrow to appear. Fill any areas that look too bare.
Try to avoid drawing stray hair unruly hair for now because we’re going to blend our drawing slightly later on.
ZONE 2: Draw the Top Half of the Eyebrow
Now that you have some experience drawing the bottom hairs, it’ll be easier to do the ones up top.
Again, you can cross some hairs over each other to make them look natural instead of drawing them parallel to each other.
So for zone 2, we’re going to draw the first row of hair very lightly using very thin strokes.
Then for the next row down, we can darken our strokes some more. Keep going row by row until the full eyebrow is drawn in.
Along the boundary line between our two eyebrow zones, I want the hair to look like they’re affected by each other like they’re interacting with each other.
I can do that by tapering some of the top and bottom hairs together like in example G. You can also draw them like example H where they cross over each other, but I think too much of that can create a very unnatural-looking crisscross pattern as shown in example I. So it’s up to you and your creative decision and how you want to go about it.
Experiment with tapering or crisscrossing hair to see what you prefer.
If your eyebrow is looking too patterned or stiff, make sure your strokes are slightly curved and relaxed instead of straight and stiff, and remember to flick your pencil up at the end of each stroke.
Blend Your Eyebrow
Next, I’m going to slightly blend the eyebrow to make it look more full and give it some shadow.
If you’re unsure about this step, you can test it on a separate sheet of paper before applying it to your drawing and do it as lightly as you can.
If you’re still unsure, you can instead just lightly shade over your eyebrow, making sure the edges are the lightest and make sure the smoothness of your shading matches the rest of your drawing.
To blend, I’m just using a regular, soft facial tissue wrapped around my finger. Try to avoid the outer edges of your eyebrow and any stray hairs that you’ve drawn. Very gently smudge your eyebrow following the direction of the hair, using a swift motion, lifting your finger up at the end of each swipe.
The lighter you press, the less you’ll smudge and vice versa, so do what feels comfortable to you. If you need to do it a few times to blend the entire eyebrow, use a clean spot on the tissue each time.
Here’s a before and after so you can see how much I blended mine. You absolutely don’t have to blend yours as much!
It doesn’t look pretty right now and it’s not supposed to because we’re going to work the drawing even more. The smudges act as cast shadows and it makes the eyebrow look bushier without having to draw an overwhelming amount of hair.
Let’s take a break from the main body of our eyebrow for now and finally draw some stray hair. The reason I’m drawing the stray hair now is that I want these pencil strokes to appear as sharp/clean as possible.
Draw Stray Eyebrow Hair
You can skip this section if you want your eyebrow to look well-groomed and plucked.
I’m just sort of expanding the eyebrow in a very subtle way, drawing very light hairs that are shorter than the others that we’ve drawn so far. I like to draw them even lighter the further they are from the main part of the eyebrow.
Try to spread them out, so they’re not too close to each other.
Along the top of your eyebrow, draw your pencil strokes especially thin.
Add more stray hair if you want your eyebrow drawing to appear bushy.
By now, you can probably tell that I’ve expanded my eyebrow past the original outline that I made, and that’s completely fine. Because it was meant to be a rough outline – something to help us during the initial drawing phase. So don’t feel like you need to strictly stick to that original shape!
Darken and Sharpen Your Eyebrow Drawing
If you think your eyebrow lacks that 3D feeling, you can darken hairs that face away from the light.
Here’s an example of what I mean using a diagram of the eyebrow from the profile view:
My imaginary light source comes from the top, so the lightest hair will be the ones along the top (zone 2), because those hairs face the light more directly, while the hair along the bottom (zone 1) are facing away from the light, making them appear darker.
So simply darkening the hair along the shadowy side of your eyebrow, can make it look more 3D.
Okay, so earlier we used a tissue to smudge our eyebrow in order to give it cast shadows and make it look more filled in.
This process made it a little blurry.
We want to give it back some definition. In other words, I’m redrawing some of the hair so that they are more apparent and appear sharper.
You don’t have to redraw every hair, just pick a select few and try not to favor one section of the eyebrow over another. I’m just redrawing every other one or so, allowing the others to act as fillers.
Try to keep your pencil very sharp throughout the process.
If you like the hair color/shade of your eyebrow currently, just focus on making the hair look sharper, but if you’re like me and want to darken your eyebrow more to make the drawing POP, you can go ahead and darken them at the same time by pressing harder with your pencil as you draw each stroke.
As I’m doing this, I find myself doing some touch-ups like elongating some hair or even adding some new ones where there appears to be an odd gap. Just do what you think looks good for your specific drawing.
As you go along, step back from your drawing every so often to make sure you like how it’s coming along.
If you need to remove some hair, pinch your kneaded eraser to a fine tip and dab the hair away gently instead of rubbing out an entire area of your drawing.
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Darlene created RFA In 2013 with the goal of sharing simple yet detailed drawing tutorials with other artists on the world wide web. She is a self taught pencil portrait artist and Youtuber.
Hey, you’re reading a detailed step by step tutorial on how to draw a realistic eye from the side, QUARANTINE EDITION!
✏️ TOOLS I USED:
Since art supplies may be hard to come by during this time, use whatever tools you have or you can even make your own. I’m using a dollar store pencil, a tissue, a homemade blending stump and a kneadable eraser, which you can learn how to make in my other post: How to Make a Kneaded Eraser Putty!
Dollarstore Mechanical Pencil (Studio brand) that comes with 0.5mm 2B Lead
Facial Tissue by Scotties: https://amzn.to/2XNOqfw
If you want to watch the Youtube video version of this blog, click here. It’s a fully narrated tutorial. If you get stuck on any of the steps below, remember that you can always refer to the video. If you navigate to the video description, I’ve provided you with timestamps so you can easily and quickly find the section you need 😊.
Let’s get started!
Draw the Eyeball
Lightly draw or trace a circle for the eyeball. It doesn’t have to be perfect because we’re only going to use it minimally during the construction process of our eye and then we’ll erase it completely.
Just in case you’re wondering, my circle is 6cm in diameter.
Draw the Cornea
Draw a small bump or cornea in the direction you want the eye to face. I want mine to face the right, so I’ll draw my cornea on the right side.
In terms of sizing, the cornea’s length is roughly half of the eyeball’s diameter (or the length of the radius).
Draw the Iris and Pupil
Now draw the iris by creating a curve that touches the top and bottom of the cornea. Make sure your linework is very light, so you can make changes easily.
Erase part of the eyeball that crosses through the iris/cornea. Then inside the iris, draw a narrow oval for the pupil.
Draw the Eyelids
Now let’s draw the eyelids.
Starting roughly from the center of the eyeball, lightly draw a curved line for the top eyelid. It can cover part of your iris or expose it completely, then wrap the eyelid around the other side of your eyeball.
To draw the bottom lid, create a curve where the two eyelids meet and then continue your stroke toward the bottom of your iris.
Example of a narrow eye (the iris is more exposed at the bottom, rather than the top.
Usually, when our eyes are open, the iris is most exposed at the bottom rather than the top. So if you want to draw narrow eyes, keep that in mind:
Alright, moving on! Right above the top eyelid, draw the eyelid crease. You can use the eyelid shape as a reference or draw a more uniquely shaped crease. Connect that pencil stroke to the top eyelid using a slight curve.
To complete the bottom lid, I’m drawing a stroke that goes almost straight down, but you can angle it out or in if you want.
You can add wrinkles at the corner of the eye or at the end of the eyelid crease if you want.
Bulging eye example
Tip:If you wrap the eyelid skin very close to the eyeball, you can get a bulging eye effect:
Once you’re done, erase the circle guideline and parts of the iris that fall outside the eye-opening.
Eyebrow Placement
Now let’s figure out where to place the eyebrow.
Lines from left to right: Tail, arch, and beginning of eyebrow.
Draw a very faint line at the end of your eye, another line from the cornea’s edge, and then a line that angles out from the eye, similar to the picture above. These are for the tail, arch, and beginning of the eyebrow.
Eyebrows come in all shapes and sizes, so don’t worry too much about this part. They’re just rough guidelines.
Now that we have 3 guidelines in place, we can draw our eyebrow more easily – using them as rough guidelines/boundaries.
You can draw your eyebrow lower or higher than mine if you like, and you can draw it as thick as you want.
Keep your pencil strokes extremely light so that your outline won’t show through later – That would take away from the realistic effect that we’re going for.
Once you’re happy with the shape of your eyebrow, erase the 3 guidelines. We’ll add the eyebrow hairs later!
Draw the Highlight/Reflection
Let’s add some highlights in the eye. Highlights are the brightest area of a drawing.
A highlight can be from a nearby window or any light source. Here are a few example shapes:
These shapes are all curved because the eyeball is curved, so a rectangular window, for example, might take on more of a C-shape.
You can come up with your own shapes and stretch them across the eyeball, covering as much or as little space as you like.
If you want, you can add obstructions in the highlight like the silhouette of a person standing in front of the window or some curtains. You can even create a gradient across your highlight to indicate a difference in light intensity.
Anyway, once your highlights are drawn, erase any lines that cross through them, cleaning them up.
I like to use my kneaded eraser for this, by rolling the end till it’s pointy and then dabbing the graphite away. Here’s a closeup:
You can even flatten your eraser to work along an edge:
Throughout the drawing process, try to keep your highlights as clean as possible so that they can stand out.
Shade the Pupil
Time for some shading!
Let’s start with the pupil, shading it really dark, because it’s actually a hole in the iris.
Shade the Iris
Next, we’ll shade the iris. Remember to be very careful around the highlights because we want to keep their edges crisp. You can shade as light or as dark as you want, without going darker than the pupil.
I recommend blending the iris now, using a tissue or blending stump for example, so it looks more smooth before moving onto the next step, or you can skip the blending process if you want.
I blended my entire drawing at the very end to keep the Youtube video short. But I highly recommend blending as you go because it’s a lot easier that way and you can avoid smearing your work during the process.
Here’s the shading/blending process that I like to follow:
I shade the light values, blend it, then add shadows, I try to blend just the shadows so I don’t smear the darker graphite into the lighter areas. Then finally I add details. If I need to do any blending after the details are added, I blend around them, being very careful not to blur or smudge my detail work.
Once detail work is smudged, it may be difficult to recover:
Okay, moving on!
Exaggerated example
My imaginary light source comes from the top right, so I’m shading the top of my iris darker because the iris shape is concave, so the top of the iris is actually facing away from the light, whereas the bottom of the iris, faces toward the light.
As I work my way down, I apply less and less pressure to get a gradient, as the concave iris shape starts curving/facing toward the light.
Also, you can shade the very top of the iris even darker to account for cast shadows from the eyelid.
Something I like to do is shade the rim of my iris darker than the iris body to give it more contrast, but that’s completely up to you.
The large highlight is too overpowering for my liking, so I’m going to make it more subtle by shading a gradient across it, making it dark at the bottom and gradually lighter toward the top, just like the example I showed you earlier:
When you finish shading the iris, make sure that the outline of each highlight is no longer visible. If it still is, you may need to erase it slightly or shade the surrounding area a little darker so it blends in/disappears.
Okay, so that was the simple and quick version for shading an iris. If you want to add more detail, you can apply the following steps…
More Detailed Version of an Iris
This section is optional, but to make the iris look more interesting, you can add some fine detail such as lines that stretch outward from the center.
Use your pencil and eraser to render these lines. If you want to draw straight lines, you can flatten your kneaded eraser, and then just press and lift the graphite away or rub gently. If you curve your lines close to the pupil (the hole inside of the iris), you can make the iris look more 3d.
Try to angle or space out some of your lines randomly and vary the thickness to make them look more natural.
Squiggly lines example. You can use a kneaded eraser or solid eraser for this.
As an alternative, you can draw squiggly shapes if you prefer. I’m drawing this example on the same iris, but I recommend you select only one style or somehow merge the two.
A solid eraser will work too, just make sure that it’s pointy enough. You can cut the eraser to make it as pointy as you require. It’s good to overlap the squiggles too.
After that, use your pencil to darken some of the spaces in between your squiggles to add some depth and contrast.
These lines and squiggles are all part of the iris, so we’ll need to shade them similarly to how the iris was shaded before they were added. Remember we shaded the top of the iris? I’m doing that again, except this time, lighter.
Oh, and shade around the outside your pupil if you want the area to appear deeper.
Anyways, that’s the detailed version of an iris. You can of course stick with the simple version.
Shade the Eye Whites
Let’s shade the eye whites now.
They’re called eye whites, but they’re not exactly white, so don’t be afraid to shade them.
Refer to your light source again (mine’s in the top right) – Subtly shade the eyeball lightest where it faces the light and darker where it faces away from the light.
To shade very smoothly, try to keep pencil strokes close together to eliminate gaps.
Shade the top and bottom of your eye whites.
Now we’re going to shade the top and bottom of the eye whites. We’re shading the top because the eyelid sticks out and creates a cast shadow directly below it, and the bottom because the round eyeball curves away from the light source, putting it in shadow.
While we’re here, I’m just going to shade the iris rim to soften the edge.
You might wanna blend your eyeball before moving on to the next step…
You can add veins in the eyeball by sharpening your pencil and drawing them in very very faintly. Try to make your veins even lighter as they reach toward the iris.
Shade the Skin
Let’s shade the skin, starting with the top eyelid.
Right where the eyelid crease is, create a gradual value change from dark to light as we shade our way down. This will make the skin actually look as though it’s creased.
After that, let’s shade the lower section of the eyelid because the skin curves away from the main light source.
Now let’s shade the rest of the top eyelid, leaving the right side the lightest because it faces the imaginary light source directly.
Where the skin starts to curve away from the light, I’ll shade it the darkest.
If you want to learn more about shading and how light works, please refer to my shading tutorial.
I’m using strokes that follow the contour of the skin. This is called contour shading. If you vary your stroke pressure, making some strokes darker, you can give the skin a more realistic texture. You can even throw in a few subtle strokes that go in random directions to mimic the fine lines and wrinkles of the skin.
For the bottom eyelid, I’m shading along the top edge, while leaving a narrow space for the eyelid’s ledge.
To draw an eye pouch or bag under the eye, shade along the bottom of the eye bag to make it look as though the skin above it puffs outward.
For a subtle eye bag, make your shadows light.
Shade the Rest of the Skin
Let’s shade the rest of the skin and then we’ll move onto the eyelashes.
Starting at the eyelid crease, I’m going to shade lighter as I work away from it (as the skin curves and turns toward the light).
Tip:If your outlines are still visible after shading around the eye, try to lighten them up or darken your shading until the outlines disappear.
To shade the brow area, I’m going to again consider the light source in the top right and work out which areas of skin face the light directly and which areas face away. I’m shading the right side of the brow lighter than the left side because it faces the light directly.
You can shade the brow area however you want to define a brow shape that you prefer.
Draw the Eyelashes
Alright, it’s eyelash time. But before we draw any hair, I’d suggest that you blend your shading now because it’ll be quite difficult to blend around all the individual lashes.
To draw eyelashes, we’ll need to sharpen our pencil first. I’m working with a mechanical pencil, so It’s already quite sharp.
Practice drawing eyelash shapes until your strokes become pretty consistent. Your eyelashes can curve more or less. Just make sure the end of the eyelash is tapered. You can use flicking motions to achieve that effect. If you’re struggling with drawing smooth curves, it may help to rotate your sketchbook.
Let’s start at the top eyelid, creating lashes that grow out from the bottom edge.
Tip: Avoid drawing too many lashes that run parallel to each other. If you taper them together, you can create more natural-looking lashes that are less patterned:
There are a few things you can do to make your lashes look more unique and random. Such as vary the length, spacing, or amount they curve.
Continue along until you reach the corner of the eye. Lashes located near the corner of the eye are usually shorter, thinner, and therefore appear lighter. Don’t forget to add some lashes along the other side (far side) of the eyelid too.
Let’s move onto the bottom lid, sprinkling lashes along the ridgeline that we created earlier (Stagger them in a sort of random zig-zag pattern).
I like to draw these lashes much shorter and more spread out than compared to the top set of lashes. You can draw lighter than mine if you want a more subtle appearance.
Again, avoid obvious patterns. You can draw the lashes on their own, join them at the ends or cross them over one another.
You can also vary the hair spacing, length, and thickness.
Don’t forget to draw lashes along the other side (far side) of the eyelid too :)
Draw the Eyebrow
Once you’re satisfied, it’s time to work on the eyebrow. The hair growth pattern might seem confusing, but let’s break it down.
We can draw a line through the eyebrow to separate it into two zones. I’ve drawn a line from the top right to the far left. This boundary line is different for everyone because there are so many different types of eyebrows.
In zone 1 (the bottom portion), we’re going to draw hairs that point up, and then as we work toward the left, they’ll point more toward the tail end of the eyebrow.
In zone 2 (the top portion), the hairs mostly point in a downward direction toward the tail of the eyebrow.
Where the hairs from both zones meet, I like to taper them together instead of cross them over one another, but you can do whatever you prefer.
Draw a boundary line through the eyebrow to separate it into 2 zones.
Okay, let’s draw a faint boundary line for our eyebrow to separate the 2 zones, using short, disconnected pencil strokes because we don’t want this line to show through in the end.
Then, using light strokes, roughly draw hairs in zone 1 while staying within the boundaries. As you work toward the left, curve, and angle the hairs so they point more toward the tail of your eyebrow. We’re going to blend this out in a second, so it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Then draw a few faint hairs in zone 2 without crossing over into zone 1.
I’m going to lightly blend the eyebrow out using a regular facial tissue wrapped around my finger. Blend from right to left, basically, in the general direction, all the hairs are pointing. After blending, we now have a base layer of cast shadows / subtle hair that we’ll draw on top of.
Now we’re going to draw the final hair which we won’t blend. I’m going to draw them dark, but you can adjust the pressure based on your preference.
As I draw, I’m tapering 2 or more hairs together so they don’t look bushy.
If you find these strokes difficult to draw, try rotating your sketchbook.
You can add some unruly hairs on the far right. I like to draw these ones lightly.
Once you’re done with zone 1, move up to zone 2, drawing hair that points down, toward the left.
Again, where the hair from both zones meet, I like to taper them instead of crossing them over each other because I think when they cross over each other, it looks messy but feel free to experiment with both.
Try to avoid drawing straight lines and instead curve your strokes even just slightly. Also, try to feather out your pencil strokes along the top of the eyebrow.
Okay, next, we can actually get the eyebrow to look 3D by making specific hairs darker. This could be a whole topic of its own, so let’s keep it simple.
The hair right below zone 2 are covered in shadow because when they meet with the hair above, they curve outward and are therefore facing away from my light source.
Make the eyebrow more 3D by darkening the hairs right below zone 2.
If we shade them darker, we can give the eyebrow more dimension (depth). I’m just going along each and every hair and making them a bit darker.
Now there’s a clear difference in value between the two zones, making the hairs point out toward the viewer instead of appearing flat on the page.
By now, our faint eyebrow outline should no longer be visible. If it is, erase the outline carefully or draw additional hair until the outline disappears.
Let’s go around the edges and add some lighter hair and/or unruly hair. You can draw them all over and spread them out pretty far if you want the eyebrow to look unplucked.
I’m just gonna shade a slight cast shadow right below the eyebrow.
Okay, I think that’s enough for the eyebrow!
Make the Eye Look Wet
To make the eye look wet, we can add water along the bottom of our eyeball.
Grab your pointy solid eraser or kneaded eraser, flatten it, and erase a thin space along the eyeball, where it meets with the bottom eyelid.
If the line of water doesn’t show up well, shade around it slightly. The (increased) contrast will bring it out. Or you can use a white gel pen or correction fluid to introduce a bright white value.
Blend your Eye Drawing
If you’ve already blended your drawing throughout the tutorial or you’re not interested in blending, please skip to the section on how to make the drawing pop.
Check that your shading is as smooth as possible.
Alright, before blending, we need to make sure our shading is as smooth as possible, so that means making sure there are no gaps between our strokes and that any blotchy areas are reduced to the best of our ability.
Before and after blending with a tissue and blending stump.
Blend one section of your eye at a time, using a clean blending stump, tissue paper, q-tip, or fine-haired paintbrush (whatever your preference is).
I like to blend from a light area into a dark area so I can avoid unwanted smear marks.
In large areas of my drawing, I wrapped a tissue around my finger and swiped gently from the lightest to the darkest area. Blend as much as you need to until the drawing becomes nice and smooth.
Be very careful when you blend around detail work like the eyelashes and eyebrows, making sure not to blur/smudge them. A pointy blending tool like a blending stump will work well for getting into tight spaces, blending precisely where you want it to. But you can also use a folded tissue paper:
Carefully blend around eyelashes with a pointy blending tool (I used a folded facial tissue).
As you blend, follow the direction of each eyelash, being careful not to smudge them.
If you’re using a tissue and there’s a tight spot you need to get into, fold your tissue paper using fewer layers, making it tighter, or you can blend the area with your sharpened pencil, basically filling in any white dots or valleys on the paper’s surface.
When the tissue becomes too dirty, fold your tissue again using a clean spot or just rotate it to a cleaner spot.
Tip: You can remove excess graphite by dabbing it with your kneaded putty eraser gently (learn how to make one here). This is how I get rid of blotchy areas to make the drawing look even smoother. Areas that don’t have enough graphite can be filled in using a dirty blending tool (this also blends the drawing at the same time).
Alright, side note! So we covered this earlier, but if you still have a visible outline around your cornea, and you can’t just erase it because it looks weird without the outline, you can make it blend in by shading the skin beyond it just enough to make the outline disappear.
Now the cornea’s outline is no longer visible since it has blended into the background.
Make the Drawing Pop
If your drawing doesn’t pop enough, try cleaning up the brightest parts of each highlight or using a white gel pen/correction fluid to make the highlight a bright white.
You can also shade the darkest areas of your drawing even darker.
Or you can add more detail to the iris to make it stand out more, like the example I showed earlier (In the section called “More Detailed Version of an Iris”).
I’ve also gone along and did more blending to make the drawing even smoother.
Extra Tip
If you want to draw fine wrinkles across the skin like I did here along the top eyelid, pinch your kneaded eraser flat and then press it gently along the eyelid, lifting very tiny amounts of graphite. Space them out somewhat randomly and change the angle.
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I hope this tutorial was helpful! If you have any questions, leave them down below. If you haven’t watched the YT tutorial yet, you can click here to watch it.
I hope you guys stay safe and are doing well. Thanks for stopping by!
Darlene created RFA In 2013 with the goal of sharing simple yet detailed drawing tutorials with other artists on the world wide web. She is a self taught pencil portrait artist and Youtuber.
I’ve always found shading to be the quickest way to add realism and depth to my drawings, be it portraits, concept sketches or even a quick doodle.
In this tutorial, I want to share with you 4 simple shading techniques that can help you achieve realistic textures and effects that will enhance your drawings and bring them to the next level.
These techniques may look super simple, but that’s the beauty of it. Let’s see how they can be applied and how they can transform a drawing :)
Hatching
This is done by drawing lines that run in parallel or side-by-side. Since the lines are uniformly patterned, it works very well for shading things like wood grain, brushed metals and fingernails, just to name a few. A sharp pencil works great for conveying metallic textures, while a blunt pencil can help you achieve smoother strokes that will also be more easy to blend.
Be careful when using this shading technique on round objects. If the strokes are not blended together well enough, it can make a round drawing appear flat. Here’s an example:
The straight lines take away from the drawing, making the viewer perceive the object as flat, instead of 3D.
Cross Hatching
This is where you draw lines that cross right through each other. They can go in any direction.
It’s great for creating textures such as certain fabrics (predictable patterns) or even fine lines on the skin (random patterns).
Circulism
This shading technique consists of many overlapping circular shapes. I use it frequently to shade realistic skin. It works well for conveying soft or fuzzy surfaces. The more you overlap the circles, the smoother the texture.
The tricky part is trying to control pencil pressure so each circle is similar in value.
Contour Shading
This is where you create lines that follow the shape of the subject you’re trying to represent. Contour lines can go in any direction.
They’re great for shading things that already display lines running along the surface, no matter how subtle. For example apples, onions, and lips. In this example, the lines also double as lip wrinkles too.
For each shading technique, the more densely you shade, the smoother the shading will appear, and the harder you press down on your pencil, the darker your shading will appear, allowing you to achieve a sense of visual depth.
Combine Shading Techniques
All of these shading techniques can be used in combination wherever you see fit. I used all 4 to shade this wrinkly hand. The combination of these techniques helped me achieve various textures commonly seen in wrinkled skin.
Starting with just the outline of a hand, I applied circulism as a base layer to give it a consistent texture all throughout – A texture that resembles subtle fine lines on the skin.
Hatching and contouring were used to show stretched skin that wraps around/across the shape of the hand.
Hatching also works very well for shading nails, as mentioned earlier. Especially nails that have prominent stripey patterns.
Cross-hatching was used very minimally to create realistic wrinkle patterns around the knuckles where the skin is thick. I varied my pressure to make some lines darker than others just to make it look more random and realistic.
You don’t have to stick to these 4 shading techniques exclusively because there are many others you can use, or just make up your own to create the texture and look that you want for your drawing. Here are a few examples:
Practice Shading Techniques!
Here are some fun exercises you can do to practice. I’ve attached a free printout at the bottom of this article for you to use.
Exercise #1:
Draw a row of squares or rectangles and shade them from left to right using your shading technique of choice. Remember that the more pressure you apply, the darker your shading will be and the more densely you shade, the smoother it’ll be.
Exercise #2:
Sketch a variety of common objects and shade them in using shading techniques that best describe the texture.
For example, I want to shade the toy horse above so it looks wooden. The hatching technique looks similar to wood grain, especially the lines vary in darkness:
The burlap sack below is made of thickly weaved material. Cross-hatching would work for this one, but I wanna make the bag appear more 3D, so I’m using a combination of cross-hatching and contouring called cross-contouring. In shadow areas, I apply more pressure on the pencil, creating darker lines.
Teddy bears are usually soft and fuzzy. Do you remember which of the 4 shading techniques creates a soft and fuzzy texture?
If you guessed circulism, you’re right!
The more circles I draw, the softer the texture becomes…
To make your shading look even softer, use a blunt pencil and/or blend the shading out with a blending tool such as a tissue, for example. Feel free to experiment with a different shading technique to see how it changes the look and feel of your subject!
You can combine shading techniques or make up your very own:
Here are a few objects you can use for practice. For each one, sketch it out and choose one or several shading techniques that will best describe the texture. For example, the wooden toy could be a mixture of hatching, contouring, and dashes.
Click hereto download the image above (link will open in a new tab).
The texture that you choose to give each object is completely up to you. Stretch your creative muscles and have some fun with it! Feel free to shade outside of the lines or get rid of the outlines altogether.
You can practice with the shading techniques introduced in this tutorial, or create your very own :)
I hope you found this tutorial helpful. If you liked it, please share it and leave a comment down below! Let me know if you have any suggestions for future tutorials!
Darlene created RFA In 2013 with the goal of sharing simple yet detailed drawing tutorials with other artists on the world wide web. She is a self taught pencil portrait artist and Youtuber.
One of the most distinctive features of southeast Asian eyes is that the eyelid crease is tapered instead of parallel with the top eyelid.
You can easily make any drawing of an eye go from, for example, Caucasian to southeast Asian by changing just a few aspects which we’ll dive into as we go along.
If you’ve already followed my other tutorials on drawing eyes, you can skip straight to step 4 because most steps are similar.
Step 1: Draw a Circle
Start by drawing a faint circle. This is the eyeball. It doesn’t have to be perfect because we’re going to completely erase it later.
Step 2: Pick an Angle
Eyes can slant in a variety of ways. Choose how slanted you want your eye to be and draw a line going through the circle at the angle you prefer.
Note: For this tutorial, the left side of my circle is going to be the inner side of the eye.
Step 3: Draw the Inner Corner of the Eye
You can use a wide variety of shapes for the inner corner of the eye. I drew a deep V shape, but you can also draw a U or a mix of the two, etc. It can be narrow, wide, shallow, deep, small or large.
Here are a few examples:
Step 4: Draw the Top Lid
While staying within the boundary of your circle, draw the top eyelid. It can take on a variety of shapes. A high arch will give you a large eye. I’m going for a medium sized one.
While you’re drawing it, picture the eyelid hugging the spherical eyeball.
When drawing caucasian eyes, I like to end my stroke at the intersection of the circle and straight line, but for an Asian eye, I like to extend my stroke just a little further:
I also like to do the same thing with the inner corner of the eye. It makes the skin look as though it’s in tension:
Step 5: Draw the Bottom Lid
Now let’s draw the bottom lid. Try to keep it close to the line we drew in step 2. The bottom lid should appear a lot less curved than the top one, but not completely flat/straight.
Step 6: Add a Crease
Here’s where we can make the eye look Asian or Caucasian. We’re going to draw a crease that runs above the top eyelid.
To make the eye appear Asian, taper your pencil stroke at the inner corner of the eye. The degree you taper it is up to you – In the example below, the eyelid crease is only visible at the very end.
For some southeast Asians, the crease may not be visible at all, and for others, it may even run parallel to the top eyelid instead of being tapered on one end.
Here’s an example of a parallel crease, which is common amongst people of Caucasian descent.
Step 7: Erase Outlines
Carefully erase all your construction lines: the circle and straight line.
Step 8: Add Some Details
Located at the inner corner of the eye is an area called the caruncula. It’s a soft pink bit of flesh that is separate from the eyeball. You can draw a curve or two right there to indicate the transition between the two forms. In the video at the end of this post, I’ll show you how to shade it.
To draw an iris of the right size, I like to measure the eyeball horizontally and divide the space into four. The iris will take up about 2/4’s of the eyeball. For example:
To draw a realistic looking iris, draw a full circle and then erase parts that fall outside of the eyeball. This step should be drawn lightly. Once you work out the position and size you want, darken the iris outline.
Step 9: Shade Your Eyes
To learn how to shade an eye and more, please refer to the video below.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you like it, please consider sharing it with your friends using the social share buttons below. Thank you!
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Want to download a FREE PDF version of this tutorial for offline viewing or printing? Please share this page with your friends using the buttons below to unlock the PDF. Thank you!
Alternatively, you can purchase ALL my tutorials in PDF form at once, for a small price. Click here for more info.
Darlene created RFA In 2013 with the goal of sharing simple yet detailed drawing tutorials with other artists on the world wide web. She is a self taught pencil portrait artist and Youtuber.
In this tutorial, I’m gonna show you a few ways to give a flat drawing more depth.
Go grab a drawing that you wanna work on and try some or all of these tips to add an additional layer of depth or 3D-ness to it.
Let’s begin!
Video version of this blog post:
Tip #1: Apply Perspective
Perspective is used to give the illusion depth or distance on a 2D surface. So by applying it properly, you can push areas far away or pull them closer to you, which helps your drawing appear more 3D / pop out of the page.
If your drawing is a scene or a subject that recedes into the distance, remember that objects should look smaller and smaller as they move further away from the viewer. To draw a simple scene like this, you can use one-point linear perspective to find out the appropriate size to draw each object.
Just align the edges of your object to a single point in the distance, using a ruler.
Applying perspective properly sets a good foundation for your 3D drawings. For more content on perspective, visit lesson 6 of my beginners’ course.
Tip #2: Apply Blur
To heighten the illusion of perspective, just apply some blur to sections of your drawing.
For example, if you want the viewer to focus their attention on only one apple, let’s say… the second one from the left, you can blur all the others and remove some of their detail. Our eyes are drawn to fine details, so the fewer you add, the better.
Simply use a soft tissue to smudge the drawing until it becomes blurred.
The further an object is from the main focal point (the second apple), the more blurry it should be. This is very simple to do and it helps to heighten the illusion of depth. It makes far away objects look even further away than they were before. And objects that are close to you will look even closer.
If you want the viewer to focus their attention on the first apple instead, you can blur all the others, leaving only the first one looking sharp:
You have full control over what you want the audience to focus their attention on.
This technique is helpful for differentiating foreground and background objects from each other as well as imply distance.
Tip #3: Shade More
If your drawings usually have minimal shading and contain mostly white or whatever color your paper is (like the image above), it’s going to be very difficult to make it look 3D.
The first thing you can do is get more comfortable with shading the entire drawing, leaving only the brightest areas white or close to white — trying not to let too much of the bare paper show through. If you’re not sure how or where to shade, please click over to my shading tutorial before you continue with this one. It covers the topic of light, which is crucial for realism.
Tip #4: Use Gradients
A gradient is a gradual transition from light to dark or the other way around. It can be created by gradually pressing harder or softer as you shade.
Gradients exist because the further something is from the light or the more it turns away from it, the darker and darker it appears… generally speaking. So even objects with flat sides will display gradual changes in light intensity.
Here’s an example: for most beginners, drawing a deep crease or wrinkle might look like something like the image below — A set of lines on the surface of the skin.
The problem here is that it just looks like a line tattooed onto the skin’s surface.
Because the shading is a solid value, the skin looks completely flat. In order to curve the skin into a wrinkle, we’ll need to make it look as though it’s turning away from the light. This means, the skin should become darker and darker as it approaches the groove, making the transition from light to dark become gradual instead of abrupt.
This gradient forces our brain to perceive the wrinkle as a curved surface instead of a flat one.
So simply using lines to indicate wrinkles, folds or creases won’t do. Try to use gradients wherever possible to give all surfaces a more realistic sense of depth.
Don’t forget that the further a surface is from the light, the darker it will be. So even objects with flat sides will display gradual changes in light intensity:
Tip #5: Remove Obvious Outlines
Any outlines in your drawing can make it appear cartoony which takes away from any effort in making it appear 3D… because in real life, there are no outlines. So make sure they’re erased or try to blend them into their surroundings until they disappear.
Tip #6: Make Full Use of Your Pencils
Here’s an example of a flat drawing. Now, this may look familiar to you if you’re a very light handed artist. The shading looks good but it still looks flat. And the reason is because it lacks value contrast.
Meaning, there isn’t that big of a difference between light and dark. Everything is just a light shade of grey.
Let me pull up a graphite value scale against the drawing to show you what I mean:
As you can see, my graphite pencil is capable of creating really dark values, but in the image above, only a small range is being used, which is kind of a big waste!
This makes the drawing look really flat.
To avoid this, apply a little more pressure while you’re shading or use the same amount of pressure that you’re used to but switch to a softer pencil than the one you’re currently using. That should give you a slightly darker value.
For example, if you’re using an HB pencil, switch to a softer one like a 2B or even 4B if you want.
When you shade with a softer pencil, your drawing should come out looking darker than it normally would. When you make this change, you’ll start to see your drawing take on a more 3D form.
So simply shading darker in general will create a more impactful drawing that’s much more interesting for your viewer to look at. As I increase the contrast, the drawing becomes clearly a few shades darker than the paper, which really helps to set the drawing apart from the background.
I like the overall level of shading that it has now. But it’s still not popping out of the page.
To add more depth, I’m gonna look for specific areas across the entire drawing where I can exaggerate or deepen the values without making it look unnatural. This requires some understanding of how light behaves. If you need a refresher, the shading tutorial is just a click away.
I’m gonna go for areas that are sort of hidden from direct light and reflections.
Darkening such areas can push parts of your drawing further into the background.
Here are a few examples.
Example #1:
Darkening crevices and nooks can push them further back. But you do wanna make sure it’s not over done. So work in layers, adding more graphite just a little bit at a time so you can save yourself from erasing later on.
Example #2:
Cast shadows, especially ones on dark surfaces are great areas to exaggerate.
You might have noticed a very subtle cast shadow along the part of the eyeball that’s directly below the top eyelid. I’m gonna exaggerate the darkest area along it which happens to be the iris.
There is a slight cast shadow here to begin with. Let’s see what happens if I add some darker graphite.
Now, the iris looks deeper, and even though I didn’t touch the top eyelid at all, it looks as though it’s been pulled towards us.
I know the changes between each image are very subtle. So if you wanna view it more clearly, please watch the video version of this tutorial: click here to watch it on Youtube.
Example #3:
If you’re drawing from your imagination, it really helps to understand some basic anatomy :)
For this example, I know I can shade the pupil much much darker because it’s actually a hole in the center of the iris that absorbs light. So it should appear very dark. It doesn’t look like a hole right now, but that will change as soon as I shade it some more:
Not every drawing needs to have such dark shades/values in it. Just do whatever is right for your specific drawing.
Looks like I’ve covered all the values in my scale…
You might have noticed that after adding all these dark shades of grey, the eyelashes and eyebrow look much lighter in comparison to the rest of the drawing, making the entire drawing look rather bland and uninteresting.
Dark values can create interest. guiding the eyes to look wherever you want them to. So to give the drawing more… of a balance, I’m going to darken the eyelashes and eyebrow as well:
That’s much better!
Now I’ve made full use of my graphite pencil by including all the shades it can possibly create. Of course you don’t have to use all the values in the scale, but it does make the drawing look a lot more interesting.
So… we’re done right? Not exactly!
We traveled far over to the right of the scale, but there’s still another value on the left, and that’s white!
If your drawing contains a lot of white areas already, this might not create much of an impact.
Okay, so here are a few areas that could use some brightening… these shiny, wet surfaces reflect a lot of light, so turning them white or close to white will make them pop, immediately:
Use an eraser to remove graphite in such areas. I like to use a kneadable eraser for high precision. For a very bright white, try correction fluid/white-out.
Use your dark and light values to continue to push and pull your drawing further. If your drawings doesn’t have any wet/shiny surfaces, just brighten your highlight further. When you do this, it helps to know where the light source is coming from so the patterns of light make sense and look as convincing as possible. Click here for the shading tutorial, if you need a refresher. In the image below, the ribbons in the eye, spokes and eye whites have been lightened, among others.
Here’s a comparison between the drawing before and after:
Well, that’s it guys!
If you have any questions, leave them down below and if you have any before and after photos, I’d loooove to see them!!
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Darlene created RFA In 2013 with the goal of sharing simple yet detailed drawing tutorials with other artists on the world wide web. She is a self taught pencil portrait artist and Youtuber.
When you add light and shadow to your line-drawings, you can make your subject come to life by creating the illusion of form and depth.
You can make a flat line drawing jump right off the page or push things far away into the distance!
In order to shade better, here are 3 things you’ll need to learn…
Pressure control
How to shade smoothly
Understand how light behaves
There are more, but let’s keep things simple! I’m going to walk you through all 3 topics and then we’ll shade something together, step by step!
This blog post is a written version of my video tutorial below:
Let’s begin!
Pressure Control
Realistic shading is done by creating a series of values/shades ranging from light to dark. The harder I press down on my pencil, the darker the strokes will be.
Portraits displaying a limited value range, can end up looking very flat. While portraits with a wider value range will pop:
To have good pressure control, practice shading from one end of your sketchbook to the other while pressing harder and harder until the values get darker gradually.
Another way to practice is to draw a long rectangle and divide it into several squares. Fill the squares from right to left, start with the darkest value you can possibly make and work your way towards the lightest.
It’s important to maintain a consistent pressure between each back and forth stroke or each individual stroke. This will take some practice and concentration to develop the muscle memory for. Here’s an example of what I mean:
If you’re interested in the tools I use and want to learn more about the different pencil types. Check this page out.
Some tools can make shading easier for you, but you absolutely DO NOT need any special pencils to get started. Because you can draw and shade realistically with pretty much anything that can make light to dark marks! Here, let me show you! I’m gonna draw using this random stick I found in my kitchen. Once it’s burnt, I can use it just like a regular pencil. And it erasable too!
My point, is that any old pencil will do. There is no reason why you can’t start shading today. Really, the most important thing is just to start!
How to Shade Smoothly
To shade smoothly, try to keep your pencil strokes close together. Eliminate major gaps between your strokes while maintaining good pressure control.
Now, it’s difficult to eliminate gaps if your pencil is sharp. So what you can do is wear the pencil down until the tip is dull or use the side of the lead to draw so your strokes come out thicker:
If you’re shading a large area and want to avoid dark stripes (the ones that form when your strokes overlap each other), avoid using the writing grip while pivoting at the wrist. When you pivot from the wrist, your stroke length is very limited:
Instead, try using an overhand grip and pivot from your elbow and shoulder to achieve much longer strokes:
This is very useful for shading large areas such as backgrounds. Just remember to keep your strokes close together, eliminating gaps that can make your drawing look scratchy.
Understand How Light Behaves
Have you ever tried shading something over and over without it looking even close to your subject? For most beginners, shading is probably a guessing game. That’s totally what is was for me! Until I learned a few basics about light.
Things just started making more sense!
Knowing where to correctly add light or shadow can make a really big difference in how realistic your artwork will come across.
I’m going to use a sphere to point out the different elements of light because the patterns are a lot easier to point out than a complex form such as… a nose for example.
Here we have a plain wooden ball, with a light source coming down from the top left.
We have two distinct sides, the light side which is facing the light source and the shadow side which is turned away from the light.
Here we have something called a core shadow which is a dark strip running along the boundary between the two sides.
The core shadow is most visible on a white table because white is highly reflective. Light rays come down, bounce off the table and illuminate the shadow side of the ball, leaving a dark band.
So as you can see, we have two types of light. Direct light and reflected light.
That’s why shadows are rarely all black. There are so many things in the environment that light can reflect off of: walls, nearby objects or even dust particles floating around in the air!
Do keep in mind that black surfaces absorb light, so in the example image below, the core shadow is no longer visible:
Looking at the image below, can you tell which areas are lit by reflections and where the core shadows are?
Answer…..
As mentioned earlier, light rays can reflect off of many things in the environment, but they have a difficult time bouncing their way into tight spaces such as the area where the ball touches the table. This is called an occlusion shadow.
And where a form blocks light from reaching another, that’s called a cast shadow. In this case, the ball is blocking light from reaching the table.
The cast shadow can tell you where the light source is coming from. All you have to do is trace the edges against your object, like so:
You can also flip this around…If you’re drawing an entire scene from your imagination, you can specify a light source and create a set of lines resting against the edges of your object to find the cast shadow’s length.
How many cast shadows can you find in the image below?
Answer…..
Let’s take a closer look at the light side of the ball.
On this side, there are only 3 things I need to point out. There’s the core light which is the area facing the light directly. Then there’s the highlight which is actually a reflection of the light source. This is the brightest point on an object. The edges of a highlight can appear soft on matte surfaces like this wooden ball or hard on shiny surfaces such as a polished plastic ball.
And as unintuitive as it seems, the highlight can change position depending on where you’re standing.
The very last thing are mid-tones or half-tones. Mid-tones are the darkest values on the light side of the ball where the edges start curving away from the light source. These areas of the ball receive less and less light the more they angle away.
Can you point out the core light, highlight and mid-tones on the nose?
Answer…..
Shade With Me: Step by Step Shading for Beginners!
Let’s shade an apple together without looking at any reference images. With our basic knowledge of how light behaves, we can essentially draw from our imagination! It’s a great way to actively think about how light behaves.
Step 1
First sketch your apple. It doesn’t have to be perfect at all just try to get something down on your sketchbook. Try to keep your outlines as light as possible. My sketch is extra dark so you guys can see it better.
You can use any pencil you want :) To learn more about the different pencil types, click here.
If you look closely, I started out by drawing a very light circle and then used that as a base to draw the apple.
Step 2
We want it to be sitting on a table, so draw the edge of that table behind your apple. Then erase any unneeded lines.
Step 3
The next step is to determine where the light is coming from. Let’s have one shining down from the top left. Draw a little flashlight or sun just to remember where the light source is.
Step 4
Where the apple blocks light from reaching the table, let’s draw a cast shadow. You can use a ruler to find the cast shadow’s length. Just align the ruler to your light source and the edge of the apple. Now we know how long to draw the cast shadow. I’m just going to draw a long oval shape on the table’s surface.
Step 5
Where the dotted lines touch the apple, we have our boundary between the light and shadow side.
Let’s say the apple is sitting on a white table. How do you think the shadow side will look, taking reflected light into consideration? Don’t forget that light can bounce off of walls, nearby objects or even dust particles.
Once you’re done visualizing, draw a core shadow. My core shadow is thinner on the left side because there are more reflections on that side (yours might look different depending on the apple’s surroundings).
Make sure the thickest section of the core shadow is darkest.
Step 6
Where the apple touches the table, there is less light. So let’s shade that area darker.
Step 7
Now that I’ve taken care of those two areas, I’m going to fill in the rest of the shadow side by laying down a flat layer of graphite that is much lighter in value.
The 3 areas we just shaded look very separate from each other, so let’s soften the transition between each one to avoid the abrupt changes between light and dark. I like to shade from the darkest area into the lighter one, using medium pressure to start.
Now the apple looks a lot rounder!
If you’re shading an object with a matte surface, an abrupt or immediate transition can indicate a sharp edge while a gradual transition can indicate a round edge.
Step 8
Let’s shade the cast shadow now. The further the cast shadow is from the apple, the more open it is to being hit by reflected light rays, so I’m gonna shade the area directly under the apple darker and then lighter as the shadow stretches away.
Step 9
How bright do you want the light side of your apple to be? It’s totally up to you! Pick a light value and then shade the entire space flatly. Just focus on your pressure control and stroke spacing.
Step 10
The next thing we need to do is blend the two distinct sides of our apple so it all comes together nicely.
Where the form turns away from direct light, add your mid-tones which will immediately make the surface appear rounder.
The more the surface of the apple turns away from direct light, the darker it becomes.
Step 11
When you’re done, use an eraser to indicate the highlight.
Step 12: Bonus
If you want your drawing to pop out, exaggerate your values to create depth (make dark areas darker, light areas even lighter).
You can only go so dark with graphite pencils. If you wanna achieve a deep black, try adding charcoal to the drawing.
Outlines can make a drawing look cartoony, so if you want your apple to look more realistic, make sure the outlines blend in with your shading or erase them as you go along.
Definitely try to make your initial sketches as light as possible so they don’t show through in the end. If they’re too dark to erase, you can add a dark background until they disappear!
Practice!
Place a few objects on a table under a single light source. These objects can be various fruit, vegetables, eggs, etc.
Observe the patterns of light and shadow on each object as you move the light around to try and understand what you’re looking at. Then draw the scene in a fairly organized manner. For example, start with the core shadow first, then the occlusion shadow etc.
Sometimes it can help to pick an object up and turn it around to study it from different angles.
If you want a bigger challenge, ask a willing friend or family member to be your study subject. Use only one light source on his or her face. It really helps to draw people that you know very well!
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Darlene created RFA In 2013 with the goal of sharing simple yet detailed drawing tutorials with other artists on the world wide web. She is a self taught pencil portrait artist and Youtuber.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
How to Draw a Female Face Easy
Step 1: Draw a Circle
Same thing here – draw a circle with a line going through the center vertically and horizontally.
Step 2: Find Out Where to Draw the Chin
Measure half the circle’s diameter and add it to the bottom to get the chin, except THIS time, draw the chin slightly shorter.
Step 3: Draw the Cheeks, Jaw and Chin
For females, I like to draw a narrow face with a narrow jaw. For the chin, taper your lines inward so the chin is more narrow than compared to the male.
Step 4: Draw Facial Construction Lines
Erase the horizontal line inside of the circle and then draw a line going through the center of the head vertically and horizontally.
Split the bottom section of the face in half and then in half again.
Do the same thing for the top section of the head.
Step 5: Draw the Eyes
One the line labelled eyes, split the head into 5 equal sections while taking the full width of the head into account.
Again, draw a set of boundary lines coming down from the inner corner of each eye. Draw your nose a little higher than the ‘nose line’ for a medium length nose.
For a more feminine face, draw a narrow nose using soft lines that are not too angular/sharp. For the nose-bridge, draw a smooth curve that’s not too dark.
Step 7: Draw the Mouth
Create your boundary lines coming down from the center of each eye.
Draw your triangle directly below the nose and resting on the line labelled “lips”.
For a medium length mouth, draw it well within the boundary lines. Rest the bottom lip on the line labelled “lips”.
Step 8: Draw the Ears
Draw the ears roughly in between the eye and nose line.
Step 9: Draw the Hair
Females tend to have softer, more rounded hairlines compared to males. Draw a smooth line around the forehead without making many sharp angles. Make sure to keep your lines fairly light as well.
Once you finished the hairline, draw the rest of the hair. For a super detailed tutorial on drawing hair, visit this tutorial.
Step 10: Complete Her Face
Draw the cheeks, jawline and chin using smooth lines. A square chin can make your drawing look a lot more masculine (not that there’s anything wrong with that!).
To finish it off, give her a narrow neck compared to his. A thick neck may indicate a muscular individual.
Easily Make Changes to Your Character
This is the most fun part of creating this tutorial! Once you’ve created a face, you can easily change the features to test out different looks: hairstyles, lips, nose lengths, eye shapes, etc… The possibilities are endless and it’s also a great way to learn how each facial feature impacts a character’s emotions.
You can keep your construction lines to aid in the process or erase them and use the faint lines from your erased features to draw a slightly different one.
Move your features around, make them bigger, smaller, longer, shorter or place them further apart. The possibilities are endless!
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Don’t be afraid to experiment with drawing dis-proportioned faces. Stretch your imagination and just have fun with it!
Draw Various Male Faces
I noticed that when drawing males with thick outlines around the mouth, they turn out looking more feminine. You can lighten the outlines to make a pair of lips look more masculine.
Drawing narrow eyes can make a face look more chill and relaxed. The more visible the iris is, the more alert, intense, surprised, innocent or even angry the face will look.
Sharper, broader angles can make him look stronger, more masculine
Try different eye shapes too. I tried to make him look southeast asian by turning his eyes up at the ends, making the tip of the nose less pointy and giving him a pair of well defined lips.
Try to turn your character from a man into a boy by simply making his jawline narrower and smoother so his bones look less developed.
See if you can age him by adding different types of facial hair too!
Draw Various Female Faces
The original face looked sad. When I made her eyes wider, her sadness disappeared instantly! I didn’t even need to change the eyebrows.
And then I changed her lips and lowered her nose.
Here are Some More Examples!
I hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial as much as I enjoyed making it :)
Happy drawing!!
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Darlene created RFA In 2013 with the goal of sharing simple yet detailed drawing tutorials with other artists on the world wide web. She is a self taught pencil portrait artist and Youtuber.
I noticed that when drawing males with thick outlines around the mouth, they turn out looking more feminine. You can lighten the outlines to make a pair of lips look more masculine.
