Drawing Tutorial 004 - Drawing a female head / face in front view

1. Lets start with the oval. We are going to draw the female face straight looking at us, therefore we start with drawing the oval which is symmetrical to the horizontal axis. We mark the eyeline dividing the oval in equal halves because we are drawing a face that is straight looking at us. Similarly mark the position of eye, nose and mouth. Keep the guidelines light to be easily erasable later on.

 See earlier tutorial - drawing a head in frontview.

2.  Use the earlier tutorials guides for drawing eye, nose and mouth to roughly outline the facial elements. Make sure there is an eye length gap between the eyes, the tip of nose is half way from the eyeline to the bottom of chin. This will keep the general proportions in place.

3. Eyes and lips are defining features of a face (after the head shape) that suggest the gender of the subject followed by nose which is less dynamic feature compared to the eyes and mouth. For drawing women the eyes are drawn in a smooth curve without a break in line. Similarly, the lips are drawn with smooth continuous lines with a fleshy lower lip. These features can be varied

4. The oval is a guideline to draw the face, but in reality the perfect oval is not found, neither does it look good from artistic point of view. An oval face looks dead and mechanical. To add life to the drawing, lets tweak the shape a little by slightly adding volume at the jaw to suggest the jaw bone. To keep the female softness of the face we are keeping this to minimum. A wider chin and prominent jaw will suggest masculinity which we don’t want in this drawing. Darkening the outside end of the eyes’ upper contour shall hint the eyelashes and add to the femininity.

Keep cleaning the guidelines as you refine the drawing.

5. Hair is strong element that completes the womanliness of a face. If other elements are neutral still a free flowing long hair shall mostly suggest a woman’s face. When added with all features of the face with a long hair shall cohesively portray a women face.

The upper contour of the hair shall be little higher above the oval guide. This is due to the volume of the hair. Depending on hair style the line flowing down shall vary. And since its shape will depend upon how it is maintained its shape will vary widely. A general guideline is to treat the hair as a flock and imagine as volumes draw accordingly rather than drawing individual hairs.

6. A little more refining of the drawing like adding a iris and pupil. A white space partially blocking the pupil and some variation in the black of iris is good technique to suggest a sparkling eye. The jawline is lightened with some variation to add some interest.

7. Finally some shading in the lips to suggest volume and roundness of the lips. Few more lines to draw the upper torso to give it shape of a portrait.