Drawin' Kevin Durand

I have an obsession. Im not ok, someone help me.... [[This blog is meant to be read OLDEST to NEWEST; to view it this way, plase click the tripple bar at the top left of the screen and select "Drawin Tree," go raibh maith agat!]]

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Think about the bones of the face now. This will probably be simpler if you adjust the layer opacity of your lineart so that you can see through it with relative ease. I also suggest opening a new layer and choosing a new color to do this next step in. That way, you can see differentiation in your drawing process

how do the cheeks sit? the jaw? the forehead? What gives the face dimension? Done be afraid to drop shadows in here to help you see the contours independent of the photo

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Now that you have a generic outline, sketch in the eye, nose, and mouth lines. Might wanna consider an ear and frame for the neck and shoulders, too. Floating heads scare people.

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On your NEW LAYER, ABOVE the image, begin assessing basic shapes; the sphere of the skull, the jaw, the center, eye, nose and mouth lines. I know the tendency here is to just start tracing but dont. 

The purpose of this is to understand how the persons face is built, not its immediate surface characteristics, so that when you want to draw them on your own it will come easier ^__^

In fact! I actually recommend drawing side be side each step, free of a tracer layer, to help you see what your doing without the details behind it. Im doing mine PSE, and in my sketchbook 

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Now, we really begin!

For this method, I am using an art program on my computer (whichever you choose) and my bity bity tablet that a friend bought me for pretty inexpensive, I call him Reginald. The same effect/learning tool can be achieved with a printed image and tracing paper ^__^

I have Reginalds' pen set to pressure sensitive, so that PSE knows when Im pressing down hard, or not; this helps adjust the thickness of the line, something that would be intuitive if you were to be drawing on paper. 

As a friendly reminder, tracing paper works the same way as a "new layer"

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Ah ha!

It is with this one, that we shall do the thing!

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*chokes on dinner*

this one maybe?

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Or this one!

Hng--- lookit that nerd *^__^*

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So, to start off with, choose a simple image of your person to work from. Who'd I pick? You guessed it you lovely, adorable internet babies; Kevin Durand!!!!! YAY!!!!!! 

Maybe this one?

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Well hi there!

If you've stumbled here, there's a pretty good chance you're hella lost. Seriously, is the dark closing in on you? Dia duit cara all the same ^__^

If you're still here, I might as well fill you in a bit:

I decided to start this blog after I'd had some oddly specific and pretty detailed dreams of me meeting Kevin Durand, a dream come true! (if only, sigh). Weirdly enough, it was as if we were both characters in The Strain, (a show which he's actually in, and you guessed it, I am not)

I wanted to draw them out and do them justice, mostly because The Strain was originally a comic and I thought it would be cute to comic format my dreams when I realized! Kevin Durand. Is Mother Fucking Difficult to Draw. I struggled and struggled until I was ready to punch myself in the face. So was my dog, and my cat, also my fish. We all hated me.

Then, I figured something out and it worked so well for me I thought I'd share it with anyone else who might also be feeling the struggle of trying to draw real people in an accurately depictive manner.