How to Draw a Face in Profile

So today I figured I would do another how to draw post. So here is how to draw a face in profile. Hopefully you be able to apply these tips to create your own character. 

This is what the final product will look like after I have finished giving you the step by step tips.

First we start off with the best circle you can muster. It doesn't have to be perfect but it helps a lot when you get to drawing the back of the head and the neck.

Then you draw a line down it facing where ever your character is going to be looking. You want to be sure not to make it too long or too short, if too long the back of the head will be too far up. If too short the back of the head os too low or your eye lines could be messed up. 

Next you add the jaw line. Try and make it go towards the circle a little bit, not straight out. Otherwise it makes the face look less realistic and a little boxy.

Here I added some guidelines for the eyes and the nose. The one that goes all the way through the head is for the eyes and eventually the ears. The smaller one is for the nose. The eyes are halfway down the face and the nose is halfway between the eyes and the chin. For the back of the neck you want to curve it a bit because thats what necks do. And for the front just find a place where it feels like a good size to you because not everyone has the same size neck.

When drawing the nose follow the circle guide for a while till you get to the bridge of the nose where the eyes will be. After that there are many different types of noses you could do. You could have hard edges or soft button nose. For this drawing I did sort of a mix in between. 

Now is the time to add the eyes! First make a line that is slightly curved vertically, careful not to make it too close to the edge of the nose. Then depending on the type of eye you could do several things. You could make it short and long or tall and thin. Mine is tall and medium width I guess, that is my favorite type because it add a sort of bubbly or puppy feeling to the eye. 

Eyebrows are the most important thing when creating an expression. I figured I would make him slightly sad or worried. To do this I simply tilted the eyebrow up at the end to create that effect.

Now I added the ear and the lips. The ear goes from the jawline to the eyebrow-ish area. I personally feel that if you go any longer it makes them look like they have incredibly enormous ears and it does not please me. For the lips you simply make a sort of triangle shape. Some artists only draw the upper lip but I feel it makes it seem a bit strange, I can't really explain it. 

Now its time for the hair, but before we get to the style I sometimes draw the hairline if its a new hair style I want to draw. So this guy is going to have the not-so-sideburn in front of his ear.

In animes people usually have very large hair, but in my type of style its a bit smaller than that. So the line around the head is how far I want the hair to go.

This is my favorite type of hair style for reasons I know not. But hopefully with this guide you will be able to use your own type of hairstyle.

Just figured I would a shirt line.

So now I shaded the hair and it is finished. And that is how you draw a face in profile. 

I hope this helped you in your exploring of art-ness. let me know what you think in the comments below. If you want your request to remain private or anonymous just say so and I won't post it but I can still see it. Post a comment and tell me what you think! See you next time :D

Oh! And you should also check out this amazing girl. She is a fantastic artist and posts some really funny pictures and stuff. 

Grell, How to Shade

So this post is going to be specifically on how to shade. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before or not, but I have started watching Black Butler and it is fantastic! However it is also really creepy. So anyway when I was in class today I randomly thought of that show and so I searched up a picture to draw and then I saw one of Grell and so I thought, hey I've drawn Sebastian and Ciel quite a few times, so why not Grell. And so I decided to also make it a blog post of mine.

Credit to: ensacarmexico.com

So here is the picture I am going to be drawing, I apologize its backwards, my computer was being weird and didn't want to flip the picture around. Also I had to kind of improv the top of his hair cuz you can't see it.

So here is the outline that I had and this is what we are going to start with today.

So the first thing I do is shade all of the hair the lightest tone that there is, not including the highlight.

So to get the highlight what I do it take an eraser and treat it like a pencil and "draw" in the highlight. I also rubbed the side of the eraser to make it have a pointier edge so that the line wasn't too thick. Then I added some shadow in the hair. The shadow can be found under the spikes of hair and the hair behind his neck. 

Finally we add the facial shading. There is some under his nose, right at his jaw line and where his eyelids and eyebrows are. And don't forget under the hair as well. 

Well I hope this helped you guys, please if you have any suggestions please post a comment below, I have a request for chibi Avengers right now and I will hopefully have that done for next week. Would you guys want it to be another how to draw post? Let me know! I hope you guys had a wonderful week and that next week doesn't suck too much for you. See you next time :D

Annabeth Chase

Annabeth is a character from Percy Jackson. She is the daughter of Athena and super smart (which is kinda a given). She and Percy have known each other since the first book and she is the first person he meets who is a demigod at camp half-blood. And the first thing she ever says to him is when he wakes up from being knocked out for two days is "You drool in your sleep." The beginning of a great romance.

I found another one of Viria's drawings and fell in love and had to draw it! This isn't typically what she looks like. Viria wanted to make Annabeth look more girly and this is one of the drawings she came up with.

I am not going to draw the arm or the word Chase (her last name) and I will recreate the rest of the hair on my own.

As always I start with the eyes. Because we are aiming for more "girly" they will be more pointed on the edges and also thicker. Probably because of all that mascara girls are cursed to wear. 

Next I will draw the nose and her eyebrows. In Viria's drawing I think Annabeth is giving Percy that weird eyebrow thing. Later on I will change the eyebrows so they don't look like that. 

Now I will draw her face. 

Now here are the first few lines of her hair and her lips. I am going to say in advance I love how wavy her hair is!!!

Here is the rest of the hair that was shown in the picture. From here on I am drawing it on my own with the exception of here eyes.

 So here is my attempt at finishing her hair and drawing here irises.

Here I shaded in the eyes. Some tips, find the highlight and draw a circle around it as to not shade it accidentally. The outline her pupil and shade the entire iris the lightest color and then go back and shade in the darker areas.

And finally finishing the shading in her hair and shirt. (Yes I gave her an owl necklace, there is nothing wrong with that) 

Hope you enjoyed this How to Draw session or whatever you would call it. Comment what you think I should draw next! :)

Alphonse Elric, How to Draw

I have not so recently gotten into this anime series called Fullmetal Alchemist. It is an amazing show about these two little boys who loose their mother to a disease and try to bring her back to life using alchemy. Which is the ultimate taboo for alchemists. "Alchemy is the art of deconstructing and reconstructing matter, in order to obtain something something of equal value must be lost. Therefore human transmutation is a taboo among all alchemists. For what could equal the value of a human soul." as said in the intro episode. Needless to say they failed and created this monster and in doing so the older brother Edward (Ed) lost his leg, and the younger brother Alphonse (Al) lost his entire body. In trying to bring his brother back Ed bonded Al's soul to a suit of armor costing him his arm. After this tragedy Ed gets automail for an arm and leg so he can walk again. His plan is to join the military in order to get restricted information in hopes of getting their original bodies back. If you have any interest in watching this show click here. Trust me, you'll be glad you did. ;)

Now I feel like Al doesn't get enough credit in this show at points so I'm only going to do the tutorial on him. This is a picture of them before they lost their bodies. Here is the picture I drew.

So as always I start with the eye's shape, but what I did differently this time was add the mouth before I added the face outline. I did this because his face is just easier to draw if you can relate it distance wise to something else. Later on if you think the face looks too long, bring up the mouth and nose and then re draw the chin. 

Now I added the eyebrows, teeth and tung. Notice the eyebrows and eyes have lines next to them. Those are meant to help create emotion. Like in this picture he is scared/shocked because his brother is about to get him in a choke hold. Naturally. 

Now I add the face line, ears, and the hairline. Notice how his hair is spiky and goes off to one side. BE CAREFUL!!! His hair is VERY hard to draw! It took me like 4 tries till it didn't look like he was being electrocuted!!!! So don't beat yourself up if it doesn't look perfect the first time.

At this point I'm going to do the clothing in pieces so it's not so overwhelming. Here I drew just the top of the arm sleeve. Here it is very important that you look at the picture to help you with drawing the clothing. 

Now I'm drawing the collar and the side of his shirt and a little of the bottom. Remember that the shirt is blowing in the wind all dramatic like, so if it looks a little strange to you just let it be till you finish the outline. If it still looks weird then go back a fix it. 

Next I'm drawing the rest of his shirt, his other arm, and his brothers arm. 

Time for Al's close up! I zoomed in so you could see the shading I did in his eyes. You do not outline the entire iris because of the shine, so just leave it white. 

Now for the final steps, I will shade in his shirt and undershirt one solid color, then I will add in the shading. I know its hard when the picture is not black and white to shade, but a tip is to see if one color is darker than the other so that they don't look like they are part of the same thing. 

Finally, the rest of the shading. Usually the darker parts of the cloth occur around the crease lines, just remember that. Also I added the shine in Al's hair. All I did was erase a little on the top and sides. (Sorry, it's kinda hard to see in this picture). 

Now since this picture was all about Alphonse I decided only to do the tutorial on him. But since the drawing looked strange with a random arm around him, I decided to do Ed as well. I hope this helped! And if you want to see one of your favorite characters as a drawing, feel free to leave a comment below :D :P 

How I Draw Step by Step

In this post I'm going to show you the steps I go through whenever I draw a picture. Today I'm going to draw one of Viria's drawings of Percy Jackson. She does amazing art, go check her out!
Here is the drawing I'm going to attempt to draw.

So first off I always start with the eyes and just the bridge of the nose. A helpful tip, the eyes always line up with each other.

Next I add the iris of the eyes, the eyebrows and the rest of the nose. I typically don't add the pupils till I'm nearly done because then you can see where it makes more sense for him to look. Note: in this drawing he has a sad expression so you want to have the edge of the eyebrows closest to the nose tilted upward slightly. 

Now I'm going to add the side of his face outline. 

Now here I add the hair line, mouth, and ears. Notice that tiny dashes of hair cover the ear slightly. As you can see the jaw looks slightly strange now, I changed it a little bit as I was drawing and developing the picture later on, but if you like it you don't have to change it. 

Before I add the top of the hair I am going to start on the arm and neck. Some tips: the sleeve of his shirt starts at his cheek bone and goes up from there. The neck of his shirt covers the right side of his neck so you don't have to draw that. And lastly the neck starts right next to the jaw line on the left side. You can use the picture at the top for reference if you wish.

Now I'm going to draw the top of his hair, if your having trouble think of his hair as waves. He is the son of Poseidon after all.

Here I zoomed in on the eyes so you can see the shading I did on the iris and pupils. This time I did not add a shine in his eyes because I didn't want this post to be more complicated than it probably already is.

I felt like the hair needed a few more lines at the top so I added them in if your wondering what I changed. I also shaded in his hair. Just a tip, try to shade from an origin. I used the part of his hair where it changes from waving one way to the other, if that makes any sense at all.

And finally I shade in his CHB tee-shirt. If you want to you can add more lights and darks, but I decided to leave it as it is for now.

Hope this helped and remember, if you have a character you would like me to draw please leave a comment on one of my posts and I'll do my best to draw it! Bye