Face Tutorial

Hmmm...well this is the first tutorial I'm making... Recently I've been using my tablet a lot and these tutorials will mostly be done on the tablet. If you don't have a tablet, I'll take that into consideration in the coloring tutorials. Also, don't expect for your work to turn out like mine unless you take a lot of extra time to neaten it up. Since this is a drawing tutorial, it can easily be applied to pencil. Just remember that it's okay if you're character isn't perfect. I've been drawing anime for a couple of years so I've had lots of practice. But try your best to get every detail of your character the way you want it without getting frustrated. Take a look at my old art if you dare.

Well, I'll start off in Painter 6 with a new document, and have the pencil tool selected. Right now the size of the pencil is set to 1.3 . I like to make my new sketchy documents not much bigger than 600 pixels in height so people running 600x800 resolution don't have to scroll down much to see the whole picture. If I'm drawing on paper I'll use my mechanical pencil and keep a click eraser handy. Gum erasers are messy, and I think the click erasers are the best I have used--very convenient.

	I start out sketching an oval shape. Just the general shape of the head, lightly and not really worried about facial structure at the moment. Some people draw a circle for the head and add a triangle like shape for the chin--I'll make a tutorial using that method, too.
	Then I draw a horizontal and a vertical line. The vertical line representing the middle of the face where the nose will line up, and the horizontal line roughly repesenting where the eyes will lay. This way, you get an idea of which direction the character is facing. I like to make face sketches in 3/4 view because it's a lot less flat than if they were facing striaght ahead.
	I start defining face shape and positioning of eyes, nose, and mouth. This part is important because every curve, every bit of line you choose to draw adds personality to your character. There are infinite combinations of nose, eye, and mouth positons that all help to make your character exactly what you want. Never settle with the face you created unless it radiates the impression of the character you have in your mind's eye. *It's important here to consider perspective, especially paying attention to the eyes. They are never the same size unless the character is facing forward. The eye that is farther away from the viewer is always smaller, and is thinner horizontally. Check out my perspective tutorial for more details.
	I start deciding what the hair will look like. Again, hairstyle can vastly change the look and feel of your character, so make sure the face and the hairstyle are comfortable to you and feel natural to look at. Framing of their face is also important. Examples of how different characters can look will be in another of my tutorials.
	Next I start erasing the guidelines, and make whatever minor line curve changes that I feel will solidify my character. I also start cleaning up the stray pencil marks. I have erased a bit of the nose curve at the top of that line because it made it look like her nose was too far to the right of her face. I also slightly altered the shape of her face to more enhance the personality that you see. Her eyes have been added to giving her a slightly different look and cleaned up as well. Oh, and a little line designating the lower lip.
	At this point I zoom in to really get at those stray lines and I alter the size of the pencil and the eraser tools. When I'm not drawing on the computer I usually use a .9 mm mechanical pencil. To get the lines really clean I rub the pencil at a slant back and forth on a separate piece of paper until there's a nice point on the lead, and then I use the point to go over the sketch lines very slowly and press fairly hard. This way, even if you erase the main line when you're fixing the picture there will be a slight indent of where the line was.

Go on to see this face colored in Photoshop 6.

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