Hello! Absolutely love your art! Its beautiful, realistic, and simply gorgeous and so aesthetic. I, myself, have been inspired to draw and improve on my realistic artstyle. (I only have a sketchbook thats fairly small, and a mechanical pencil.) Its always difficult for me to start, since I dont know how. When you draw, how do you start? Do you like draw a circle like most artists and work your way on that, or do you do something else?
Hey! Usually when I start a sketch of a person, I begin with their face–some artists like Kim Jung Gi can begin with any body part and just continue from there, but it’s easier for me to work on the head first. Now I don’t use a circle, but I do use some form of construction to start the face, such as a double trapezoid (explained in this post). I always try to establish three main things at the beginning; in order of priority:
1, angle of the head. I need to know first and foremost if the head is looking up, turned to the right, angled down, cocked to the side, staring straight ahead, etc. Angle affects the shape of the features massively and adds a lot of personality to a sketch, which will be important down the line.
2, sex of the subject. Very useful in the beginning–you want to know what the eye sockets look like (I personally use the outlines of the eyebrows to place the eyes, see the pic below), how the jaw is shaped, so on. If you’re still getting used to visualizing faces, it can be helpful to learn the characteristics of the two sexes. As you get better, you learn to branch out from stereotypical ‘male’ and ‘female’ looks (to more accurately mimic reality), and how to mix and match them without pushing your sketches into the uncanny valley.
3, the placement and proportion of features. If you look below, you’ll see that with only a few lines in the sketch on the far left, I convey a lot of information (mostly to myself, for future reference). The person is facing left, and the high arch of the eyebrow and smooth curve of the forehead suggest that it’s a woman.
In the next step, I sort of ‘connect the dots’ by further developing the eyes, nose, and lips, and I draw a line or two to hint at the rest of the head and the neck. I clean up some of the features in the penultimate step, and I add shape to the neck and shoulder area. Midtone values add dimension to the face. Lastly, some simple blocks of darker value hint at clothing and hair, and I add more midtown values to the face to give it volume.
((If you’re getting a bit of a “draw the rest of the fucking owl” vibe from that picture, just know that going from the third pic to the fourth pic is much easier than going from the first to the second or the second to the third. The more of a foundation that you have laid down for yourself, the easier it is to keep going.))
I’d recommend that you look at drawing processes for other artists and just test out a bunch of them (examples: full Loomis construction with a sphere and cross, the whole nine yards; laying down values to establish shapes and an overall composition; jumping right into details; blocking out shapes as with a Bargue plate). Also remember that starting a drawing traditionally may call for different techniques than drawing digitally. Oftentimes I just paint random values when I begin sketches in Photoshop (knowing I can easily undo or erase them), whereas I’m much more cautious on a physical piece of paper.
That’s a fair amount to take in, but hopefully it’s of use!
