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Are you getting a bit tired of always drawing stiff, flat faces looking forward? Would you like to start drawing faces at different angles but have no idea where to start? Do you frequently find something is a bit off when you finish your portrait drawings?
In this blog post/YouTube video I'll explain how I draw faces at a 3/4's angle and with believable proportions. In the video included in this post, I take you step-by-step through drawing a female and male face using Andrew Loomis's method, and below that, I provide a simple 4-step process for drawing faces using reference photos.
This is one of the most-used angles in both painting and photography portraiture and, in my opinion, its the best one to move on to after we've succeeded at drawing a completely forwards-facing face.
When we're looking to draw faces that are a bit more on the realistic side, it's imperative to start with an effective preliminary outline sketch that shows believable proportions and locations of different facial features within the head shape, before moving on to smaller details and shading.
Because that preliminary outline sketch is the foundation for everything else. No matter how amazing we may be at shading and texture techniques, if our proportions are off when we finish this first phase of our drawing, something will look off at the end.
We're going to be building on an unstable base.
This is why it's so important to devote enough time to our preliminary outline sketches, especially if we're looking to draw freehand (without tracing or using grids), and our objective is to create believable-looking portraits.
Drawing portraits is challenging!
The main reason being that what we see most everyday are the faces of those around us.
This means that most people, artists or not, will be able to notice if something is off when viewing a portrait, even if at first they can't pinpoint exactly what it is.
With a portrait drawing being off, I don't mean small differences in eye sizes or eyebrow shape. Human faces have natural imperfections and aren't 100% symmetric (most of the time).
What I'm referring to is the overall head shape and shapes of different facial features, proportion and location of facial elements within the head shape.
