Face Time

In my determination to learn how to sketch people, I have read several books that have given me good training suggestions. I am especially interested in faces and expressions. Here are a few of the faces from the last couple of months.

Koh-I-Noor Tri-Tone pencil on Canson Black Paper

The book "How to Draw People" by Jeff Mellem advocates drawing a face map. Visualize a balloon with a rubber band around the equator to place the eye zone. The bottom of the nose is half way between the equator and the bottom of the balloon and the mouth is halfway between the nose and the chin at the bottom of the balloon.

I didn't get the map quite right, but the hypothetical child still looks better than my previous attempts.

Faces are very striking on black toned paper with metallic pencils. I love the way the eyes stand out. (Spectrum Noir metallic pencils and Canson Black paper).

The left face is Donnie, one of my grandcats. On the right are Sam and Ben faces. Below is baby Sam sketched from a photo.

One book with step by step instructions on drawing eyes is "Figure It Out! Simple Lessons, Quick Results" by Christopher Hart. The book's emphasis is on cartoon type figures, but the instructions on eyes have been helpful when drawing from photos. Here is a page of my notes from this book.

Another tooth bites the dust!
Exceed journal paper, colored pencils

And my latest sketch, from my bullet journal, of Sam, who is losing teeth.