(funky music)
-: Hi, my name is Janet Fagan.
Today we are going to sketch portraits.
I'm gonna be using myself as a model.
I'm sitting here in front of a large mirror.
You could possibly replicate this at home if you like
by going into your bathroom, using your bathroom mirror,
maybe sitting in front of that with a light
if you happen to have something like this, a clamp light
or perhaps a lamp that you could set up beside you
because what makes it easier to see the form of the face
is having a direct light shining from ideally a little bit
above you and to the side.
The other materials that we have are paper.
You can use paper out of your printer if you'd like.
I wouldn't go any smaller than eight and a half by 11.
You'll see here, I just have a couple of white sheets
of sketchbook paper.
I'm just gonna put this out of the way.
A number two pencil would work fine.
I also have a couple of drawing pencils here.
If you have an eraser, that comes in handy.
I have a pink eraser or you can use one of these
good old white ones.
Pencil sharpener, you might wanna have one of those.
And if you don't wanna go into your bathroom to draw,
you could also use a hand mirror.
So maybe a small mirror like this or even a makeup mirror
propped up on a stack of books would work.
And so just some sort of mirror that you can look into
to get a glimpse of yourself and pencil, paper,
and erasers, and we're ready to go.
So I am also gonna use a drawing board today
because I like to work at a little bit of an angle.
It actually helps me to see what I'm doing
a little bit more clearly.
And what we're gonna talk about today are the tools
that artists use to help them to find their way
when they're navigating a portrait.
A face is a super-fun thing to draw.
You always have a model.
So you can always use yourself as a model, which is great.
But this works for friends and family members too.
So if you just have somebody that's sitting still
for a little while, maybe they're taking a nap,
maybe they're watching television.
There's your model.
So I'm gonna grab a piece of paper and the first thing
I'm gonna show you is just how to get started,
how to set up your portrait so that you know
where things go.
I'm gonna grab my pencil here and I'm gonna have
my eraser ready.
So the first step is really just to think about the whole
shape of your head, not just your face, right?
So the whole shape of your head.
So on my paper, I'm just gonna very loosely make a big oval.
And you're gonna notice when I'm drawing
that I'm gonna be very loose and very sketchy.
I'm using my whole arm and I'm really not worrying
if things are perfect because one of the things
that I really enjoy about drawing faces or portraits
is that everybody is different.
So you spend a lot of time looking and observing
and making adjustments.
The first thing I'm gonna show you is actually
called a proportion map.
And it's a guideline that gives you a general
starting point for how to put the features on the face.
But like I said, everybody's different.
So this proportion map, even though it's a general
starting place, you're gonna find the more you observe
and the more people that you draw, that we all fall
in and out of these guidelines.
So the first line for the map is really just a center line.
And because I'm looking at myself head-on in the mirror,
that center line is gonna fall right down the middle
of my face.
So I'm gonna do that.
And before I go much further, I'm also gonna put in
a cylinder for my neck and a really simple horizontal line
just to signify where my shoulders fall.
So I have my vertical center line.
The next line that I'm going to make
is a halfway horizontal line.
The halfway line for our heads is basically right through
the center of the eyes.
So I'm gonna make a halfway mark to signify that.
And then I'm gonna make another halfway mark
between the top of my eyebrow and my chin.
That line is right here.
It's right beneath my nose.
So another halfway mark there, halfway between the top
of the eyes and the chin.
And the next map line that I'm going to draw
is gonna tell me where my mouth falls on my face.
So again, halfway, halfway between the bottom
of my nose and the bottom of my chin.
So one more halfway mark.
All right, so we have a pretty good start now.
So you might notice when you look at this,
oh, you know, this looks kind of funny.
Excuse me.
The eyes look low.
A lot of people say that when they're first learning
how to draw with a proportion map.
And the eyes do look low until you put your hairline in
because when you think about the whole shape of your head,
the ball of your head is actually the highest point
and your hairline is below that.
So once you put a rough mark in for where your hairline
is going to go, which is about a third of the way
between your eye line and the crown of your head
then it's gonna start to make more sense.
So what else do we know that can help us
to map out the face?
Well, we know that in general the width of the face
is approximately five eyeballs.
So I'm just gonna take off my glasses
so that you can see my eyeballs.
So if you think about this, right.
So I'm just gonna measure it here.
And I'm gonna teach you a little trick.
So when you want to measure something that's not
right here on you, something that you're looking at,
you can use your pencil as a measuring tool.
If you keep a straight arm and think about the tip
of your pencil as one end of your measurement
and your thumb as the bottom of your measurement.
I'm gonna measure my eye and I'm gonna close one eye
so that I can see.
I'm gonna put the eraser in the corner of my eye.
And I'm gonna put my thumb in the other corner.
So I've got a measurement.
And now I'm just gonna check.
I'm gonna see.
Is my face really five eyes wide?
One, two, three, four, five.
All right, so what I just learned by doing that
is my face is a little bit narrower than that guideline.
But I can use that information in just a couple minutes.
For now, I'm just gonna lightly sketch in five eyes.
One, two, three, four, five, keeping in mind
that my particular face isn't quite that wide.
The next thing I'm gonna look for is where is my nose
gonna fit in to all this?
The other thing that we know in general
is that the sides of our noses line up
with the inside corners of our eyes.
So I'm just gonna take my pencil and I'm gonna drop
a dotted line down so that I have a general idea
about how wide my nose is going to be because I already know
from my proportion map that the bottom of my nose
is going to rest on that line.
So I'm gonna look at my nose and I'm gonna try
and figure out, "Okay, what am I seeing?"
When you ask yourself what you're seeing,
a followup question to that is, "What are the big shapes?"
And for your nose, we all have this cartilage on the tip,
the ball of our nose, and I start with that.
So for me, for my face, I have a pretty big ball
of cartilage right there.
So I'm gonna sketch that in.
And then I'm gonna look for the shape of the outside
of my nostrils on either side of that ball,
kind of a triangular shape.
And then how does that fall into the sides
or the bridge of my nose?
Okay, so just a really general sketch for the shape
of my nose.
Moving down to the mouth, the proportion line
that we have underneath the nose is approximately
where the bottom of the lip rests.
But I'm just gonna double-check that on my face.
So I can use measuring again to figure this out, okay?
So I'm gonna look for where is the halfway point
between the bottom of the nose and my chin on me?
So I'm gonna take my pencil, straight arm again,
no bending the elbow, tip of the eraser's at the bottom
of my nose and my thumb is on the chin.
Okay, so that's how far it is from the bottom
of my nose to my chin.
Now I'm gonna take that same measurement
without moving my thumb and I'm gonna cross-check it
against the bottom of my nose to my eyebrow.
And it's about the same.
So double-checking that.
So there's the bottom of my chin.
And then I wanna see where my mouth, where the bottom
of my lip, bottom of my bottom lip, closing my mouth
to check that measurement.
So the tip of the eraser is under the bottom of my lip.
The thumb is the bottom of my chin.
And now I'm gonna see where that space is in relation
to the measurement I just took.
So I'm gonna move it up and check it from the bottom
of my lip to the bottom of my nose.
It's about the same.
So I'm lining up pretty much with the proportion map.
So I'm gonna sketch in just a general mouth shape
without spending too much fuss there because I wanna put in
one more proportion map line.
The other thing that I know is that the corner
of our mouths typically line up with the center
of our eyeballs.
So I'm gonna drop a dotted line down from the center
of the eyes to the corner of the mouth.
And that's gonna line up all of the features
according to the proportion map with a little bit
of double-checking that I did with some measuring.
The other thing that the proportion map tells us
is where the ears fall.
And I'm just gonna move my hair back so you can see
my ear right here.
And the top of the ear and the bottom of the ear
fall between the eyes and the nose.
So I'm just gonna put that in on both sides.
And now is the fun part.
So this is the general idea for the sketch of the face.
You already have one tool in your toolkit.
You know that you can measure to figure out
if your measurements in your face actually fit
the proportion map or if they vary.
We know from the beginning that my face is a little bit
narrower than the five eyes across.
So we're starting to get all this information.
And we have one more tool that you can use.
And that is can take your pencil again
and you can check angles in your face.
And this is another way that you can tell
what you actually look like on paper and how you might
need to make small adjustments to make it look
a little bit more like you.
So again, I'm gonna use a straight arm
without bending my elbow.
And I'm gonna line up the angle of my pencil
between key points on my face.
So what I'm looking at right now is this, this line
between my eye, the outside edge of my eye, and my nose.
So when I line that up in the mirror, I get this.
And then I'm gonna, without moving my pencil,
I'm gonna move it down to my page.
And what that just told me is that I need to make
a little adjustment.
My eye is a little bit wider out than I originally had it.
I'm just double-checking it, yep.
And so when you start looking at the eyes, this is another
really fun place to spend some time.
So you'll notice that there's the line at the eyebrow.
And then there may or may not be an inner lid line
that you can see.
Then there's your lash line.
And then there's the bottom of your eye.
So all of these landmarks, what I like to do
is ask myself where are the highest points
of each of those?
So when I look at my eyebrow, the highest point
is on the inside.
So I'm gonna start with that.
And I'm just gonna make a sloped line.
And then I'm gonna go to the next line.
I have a pretty distinct fold right here
for the inside of my eyelid.
And the highest point there is a little bit to the left
of the center line of my eye.
I'm gonna find that on my paper and drop it down.
My eyelid line, my top eyelid, underneath the line
of my eyelid fold, there's a triangular space
that I can see in between those two lines.
And I'm gonna try and capture that.
So this is the triangle that I'm looking at there.
So from here on out, it's like a puzzle.
You're asking yourself about the relationships
of all of the different landmarks in your face.
How do the different lines that we see relate to each other?
Where are the high points?
Where are the low points?
What do the spaces look like between those lines?
And you're just gonna keep moving all around your face
asking those same questions and then checking yourself
with angles and with measurements.
So let's take a few minutes just to draw.
I'm gonna work on my portrait.
You can work on yours.
And then we'll come back together
and see how our progress is going.
(funky music)
So you'll see I've gotten a little bit further
on my sketch.
And I'm starting to look for some big dark areas
of where the shadows are falling.
So if you wanna go ahead and start adding some shading,
the way to do that is just look
for your darkest darks first.
And where I see those are along my hairline,
on the inside of my neck here, my eyes, my nostrils.
And I'm gonna start just blocking those in,
just with some hatch lines, just some parallel lines
with my pencil, just to move really quick
because this is just a sketch.
This is just a fun way to explore the face.
After I'm pretty happy that I have a reference
for the darkest parts of my face, I'm gonna start
looking for the middle tones.
And so the next areas of shadow I see that I have,
and this is where your light comes in handy
'cause you can really start to see some wonderful patterns.
So I see in my eye socket there's a shape
that's mostly shaded.
So I'm gonna make a little bit of a lighter
hatch area there.
For my other eye socket as well.
For the left-hand side of my face.
And moving down into my neck.
And across my chest.
So you can start to see the advantage of having a spotlight
is that you can see where the light tones
and the dark tones define the form.
And the more that you can observe and play with the way
that these shadows define the face, the more
that comfortable that you'll start to become
sketching portraits and playing with these neat tools.
Okay, so I'm gonna show you an example that I did at home.
If you don't wanna look at somebody head on
you can ask them to turn a little bit or you can even
do this with yourself.
But here's an example of a three-quarter view.
This is my friend, James.
And you can see that he wasn't looking directly at me.
He's looking off to the side a little bit, like so
or like so.
And I really like this view because you can see
the line of the nose.
So you'll see that this line on his face.
I think it's really fun to sort of capture that.
It's not quite a profile, a three-quarter view
where you can still see the edge of the nose
as the head turns away from you.
But the way that changes your proportion map.
So remember, we started the proportion map
with a big oval and a cylinder for the neck.
Well, in a three-quarter view,
everything changes just slightly.
So the neck isn't lined up symmetrically
with the head any longer.
But what happens is the center line, as you turn your head
the center line turns as well.
So you can imagine it just wrapping around the egg.
And then all of your landmarks
are gonna wrap around with it.
And then as you look at your neck, you're gonna notice
that the back of your head flows into the neck.
And the front of the neck, what shows is just
a little bit shorter.
So you're gonna have your same cylinder but it's just
gonna have a little bit of a different look
because the head is turned.
And you're gonna see the jawline from the side as well.
So just a couple of tips to get you exploring
from a three-quarter view.
Remember, that first proportion line is just gonna wrap
around the face, okay?
So everything on the far side of that line is smaller
than everything that's closer to you.
All right, so just a few tools and tricks.
I hope you have fun exploring with these.
The more you practice, just like any new tool,
the more comfortable you'll get.
And just draw all you can.
Keep looking, keep observing.
And have fun, thank you.
(funky music)