Introduction: How to Sketch a Face in 30 MINUTES or LESS (FOR BEGINNERS, IN GAME DESIGN)
There are a lot of reasons for someone to pursue a career in game design, but I’m sure that one of the most popular lies behind the desire someone has for being able to realize the images inside their head for an audience. However, before presenting your creativity to an audience, you might first have to present it to your coworkers or project partners, and what better way to express the thoughts in your head to them, than outright showing them.
I have several years of self-taught drawing experience, and this tutorial follows a workflow that has benefited my understanding of the face’s proportions more than any other tutorial I’ve seen before. It will show you the basics of how to draw a face (and beyond) using an adjustable format, one that anyone can use! You will learn how to think in big shapes in order to draw complicated forms, and iron out your ideas on paper before fully committing to them.
Supplies
You’ll need:
- A sheet of paper, my personal preference is sketching paper
- A drawing utensil, my personal preference is a mechanical pencil
- A ruler or straight-edge (if you struggle with drawing straight lines)
- A vivid imagination
If you have the required materials, then let’s get started!
(The time required to complete will vary depending on how fast you can draw and your personal satisfaction with how each step turns out. ~ 30 minutes)
Step 1: (A Perfect Circle)
Start off with a simple spherical shape. Lean a bit on the taller side, as skulls are not perfectly spherical. Take your pencil, hold it in a way most comfortable to you, and as quickly as you can, make a “circle” in one motion.
Step 2: (Why the Long Face?)
Draw a tall box around your “sphere.” There should be some space at the bottom of the box, depending on how large you want the chin to be. The lines don’t have to be perfectly straight, but if you have trouble, this is where your ruler or straight-edge of choice comes in.
Step 3: (Split It in Half)
Draw a horizontal line halfway across the box, dividing it into two. This is going to be the “bottom of the eye” line, as well as the ear line. This step, and the following straight-line steps, are straightforward.
Step 4: (Make That Half Into Fourths)
Draw a horizontal line across the lower half, splitting it into two fourths. This is going to be the “bottom of the nose” line. Even if our face isn’t a face yet, it might be starting to look like one to your pattern-seeking brain.
Step 5: (Cut That Out)
Draw another horizontal across the lower of the two fourths, splitting it into two eighths. This is going to be the “bottom of the mouth” line. Don’t fret, we’re almost finished (constructing the layout).
Step 6: (The Last Slice)
Draw one last horizontal line halfway across the top half of your box. This is going to be the hairline. This step actually depends on how far back you want your face’s hairline to be. If they’re bald, you canskip this step. Now that we have our layout, the real fun can begin.
Step 7: (Nosepicking)
Begin with the nose. Start with the nostrils, which should be placed anywhere between the bottom of the sphere and the next line. Draw two lines upwards to form the bridge and pull them outwards to form the brow. Your brow can be furrowed, relaxed, or titled upwards; it just depends on the face’s emotion.
Step 8: (I Can Talk!)
Draw the mouth, just below the nose, within the guidelines. Start with the slight curve of the upper lip and use a lower curve for the bottom lip. If the face you want to draw has a prominent upper lip, add a more prominent m-shaped curve above the opening of the mouth.
Step 9: (Jaws)
Draw the jawline, which will be two separate lines coming down in a V-shape from the ear line to the bottom of the box, forming the chin. Make sure that if the jaw is chiseled, the corner of the jaw falls in the mouth section. The jaw’s shape is completely up to you, there’s no wrong answer here.
Step 10: (I Must Be Hearing Things)
Draw the ears, which come up from the ear line, loop at the brow line, and come down to the bottom of the nose. This one is pretty simple. Try to think in 3D. The ears come up, and then down again, like a hoop. Don’t make them stick out too far, ears lay on the head and usually aren’t that prominent.
Step 11: (Open and Shut Cases)
Draw the eyes, starting with the upper eyelid, which takes a hump shape. Then draw the lower eyelid, which folds underneath it. Don’t get carried away with the size of the eye, in my personal experience it’s extremely easy to overshoot it. If you’re going for realism, smaller tends to be better.
Step 12: (I Can See Clearly Now)
Draw the pupils of the eyes. Think big, unless you’re drawing a crazy person, in which case they should be dilated. Make sure to leave bits of white in the middle of the eye to mimic reflecting light, indicating your person has a soul.
Step 13: (The Rest of the “Face”)
This step is optional, as this is only a face drawing tutorial, but this face needs to be attached to something. Draw two separate lines coming down from the bottom of the ears and turn the lines outwards to form the traps. It would also be nice to add a shirt or upper body covering to your character.
Step 14: (All in the Details)
This is a free-space step, all about small details. Add small folds, creases, lines, and muscle wherever you desire. Just remember, the lines you add to the skin, the older your face begins to look. Now we can move on to the hair.
Step 15: (Bushy Brows)
Start drawing the eyebrows. They can be thick or thin, but if they’re thick, think about forming big shapes instead of feathering lines one by one. You can think about the eyebrows as being rectangular or softer-shaped, but they should end after the eyes end. It helps to use the brow line as a guide.
Step 16: (Blockhead)
Draw the outline for the hair as well, since we’re thinking in big shapes. Circles, squares, cones, and cylinders all do the job pretty well. You can erase the top of your spherical shape from earlier, as it’s not needed anymore.
Step 17: (Hair-raising)
Now add detail to the hair. This step could be the longest so far, depending on how luscious or detailed you want the hair to be. Use loose lines to divide your larger shape into smaller ones repeatedly, or just freehand it. Don’t think too hard about it either, with hair, the more lines, the better.
Step 18: (Out of the Cage)
Erase your guidelines now. You can redraw over parts of the face erased in this process.
Step 19: (A Life Well-lived)
Now add small details to give your face some personality. Accessories, scars, beauty marks, tattoos, blemishes, whatever you want. What I’ve learned with details is that, while less is usually more, you can get away with more if they tell a cohesive story.
Step 20: (Let There Be Light)
All that’s left is to add shading. This is perhaps the most difficult part, in theory, but it’s as simple as thinking about your face in 3D and picking an angle where you want your light source to come from.
Step 21: THE END
CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve now constructed a face through the use of basic construction and guidelines to create generally appealing proportions! Hopefully, by drawing a face this way, you’ve learned how to uncomplicate difficult forms and approach them in a manageable way. If this wasn’t the first face you’ve drawn, then now you have a new method of approaching faces to add to your arsenal.
If you ran into any trouble thus far, or aren’t happy with the way your face turned out, then I’d recommend trying this tutorial again with reference images of real faces. It is of my belief that ANYONE can learn how to draw, it’s just a matter of repeated practice and learning from mistakes, as it’s like with any craft. Thank you for following along, your future project partners and coworkers will greatly appreciate your ability to clearly express your vision.