Pencil sketching allows you to erase unwanted lines, make light or dark drawings and add texture to renderings. Handy instructions are available to help you shape and form the head and face, keeping it in perspective. Use an egg shape or round sphere to begin with. Dividing the face into halves will give you the placement you need.
Instructions
1. Draw an egg-shaped oval sphere on the paper. Use the ruler to draw a light line down the center of it. Draw a horizontal line through the center.
2. Divide the halves again. This will give you four segments to the face. The eyes will be placed on the center horizontal line, equidistant from one another, as will the eyebrows.
3. The nose and ears are placed along the vertical and horizontal center line. As a rule of thumb, they will both be the same length.
4. Place the mouth one-third of the distance between the nose and the end of the chin. Notice that the mouth does not have a straight line through it to define the lips, but instead will have a slight dip and curve of the upper lip.
5. Place the hairline onto the forehead, which will take up a quarter of the top of the head. The hair will also extend about a quarter of an inch above the head shape, but this will vary according to hair styles, sex and age of the person.
6. Add the eyeballs by re-sketching the lids so that they follow the shape of the eyeballs. Make forward-looking eyes by placing the iris so the top of it tucks underneath the upper eyelid. Lightly shade the iris. Insert the pupil in the center of the eye and darken it. Large pupils mean little light is entering the eye. Small pupils indicate bright light shining into the eye. To show reflected light in the eyes, erase a small amount of the shading starting from the iris and moving about ¼ of the way into the pupil. Add eyelashes sparingly until the rendering is complete. Then return to the eyes and add more if you want. Make them wispy, not spikes. They also travel from the inner part of the eye toward its outer edge.
7. Start reshaping the face by curving the jawline with sharper, bolder strokes. You will then see the face take on a definite personality. Draw the people around you for practice using these basic rules.
8. Eliminate any lines you don't want with the eraser and shade where you need to define the features. The eyelids and nose will have shadow. Place shading under the bottom lip and along the jawline.
