Kids love to draw faces. School notebooks are filled with face doodles; each new holiday or birthday brings an opportunity for kids to gift portraits of themselves, friends and family members. Drawing faces is an ancient and instinctive art form. The only problem is: getting the right proportions.
After doing an earlier lesson on animal facial features, I knew it was time to introduce a solid lesson to my 6-12 year old age group on drawing proper human face proportions.
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| White board break-down of make-female features |
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| Contouring with dark brown |
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| Skin tone painted over dark contours |
Drawing:
We traced an oval-shaped tracer which I had prepared. I usually don't use tracers, but for this lesson, it was critical that the head shape is right. I also didn't want a lot of erasing and re-doing, since we would lose too much time. Students were encouraged to alter their face shape to match either masculine or female, so slightly more square for men, and slightly more oval or round for women.
Necks were drawn starting at the ears and curving slightly outwards. Necks are not straight poles!
Then we added features. Eyes in the middle of the head are almond-shaped. Women's eyes are drawn slightly more open. Irises are slightly hidden behind lids. Eyebrows are drawn continuing from nose and arching over eyes - men's eyebrows are fuller. Nose are a halfway down from eyes, and as wide as the space between the eyes. Men's noses are often slightly wider. Mouth is halfway between nose and chin and consist of upper and lower lip. Lips are as wide as the space between the eyes. Women's lips are drawn fuller and rounder, men's longer and thinner. Hairline starts a quarter way down from top of head and hair wraps down over forehead and side of head. Men may have a widow's peak or a higher forehead.
Contouring:
To give our portraits depth and form we painted them in multiple layers, starting from the most recessed, shadowy areas, and moving up to the highest, most highlighted areas. First, we created our own skin tone and painted the whole face that one color. Then, students followed along as I demonstrated painting all the areas that are deeply recessed or shadowed with one dark brown color. These areas might be the sides of neck, under the eyes and nostrils, along the sides of nose, eye lids, under the apples of cheeks, under hair line, etc. Students felt really weird doing this, because it looked so odd, but I assured them that with addition of lighter coats of color, things would look great in the end! This dark contouring coat was just for creating that dark under-color to our recessed areas.
Next, we allowed the paint to dry, then used our original skin tone and painted over top of these dark areas. Because we could still see through the paint slightly, our dark areas now look like soft shadows. Then, using our original skin tone, we created a slightly lighter tint (adding a hint of white) and painted our 't-zone' (bridge of nose and center of forehead) and the chin, apple of cheeks, outer edge of brow area, opposite side of neck, etc. We then created yet another even lighter tint of skin tone, and added a smaller highlight to top of nose, tip of chin, cheek bone, outer brow, etc. This gave us 4 layers of color (the deep recessed contouring shadows overpainted in skin tone, the original skin tone, and the two tints of skin tone).
Eyes were painted in one color, with a tint of that color for the lower part of iris where the light hits. Pupils were added. Lips were painted in two tones of red (upper lip is always darker). We added reflection spots to our lower lip, our eyes, and painted the whites in our eyes. Hair was painted in one color, with the edges, the back and hair part darker and the top highlighted with a tint.
Finishing touches:
Lastly, we retraced our features with a graphite pencil and smudged the edges slightly with our fingers. Extra graphite was added to eyebrows, upper eye lids and mouth. This added extra depth, shadow, and emphasis to our features.
These turned out wonderfully. And you can really tell who is male and who is female! The kids were amazed at their results! And no more drawing improperly proportioned faces!
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| Ages 6-9 |
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| Ages 7-12 |