The Easiest Way to Draw a Face From a Photo (Without Overthinking)

In this video I will show you how to draw a portrait from a photo as simple as possible and why the eyes, nose and mouth are not actually the best place to start. The approach that works best for me is based on observation of the reference but with much more focus on shapes and tonal values. Let me show you what I mean. So I like to start the portrait by marking the top of the head just very loosely and somehow the bottom of the chin and then use some straight lines to define the face, maybe here, just very roughly. And for me it's actually important how you use your pencil because at the start of the drawing I don't like to use the tip but rather this part, this flat part, to make a wide mark that's light because you can change it very quickly. This is what I see. Here's a straight line, here's a straight line, here the hair is covering the face, here's another straight line, maybe here's a little bit more. You can really be fearless in this approach. You can just eyeball the nose line and then the line for the eyebrows. We kind of need these lines but we're not gonna draw eyes yet or the nose yet. We just need to focus on the large shape. Other large shapes that I know is hair. Here is another shape for the hair. Here is a shape for the ear. One and two lines, a little bit here. You can make it smaller or larger. Later is how this dark shape, dark mass of the hair looks almost like a triangular. You can just gently place it. Just in this stitch don't really use dark lines, don't push too much. Use this flat part of the pencil to make wide marks. You will see how much more comfortable you will feel with the drawing and just basically blocking in these basic shapes for this portrait. Here's another shape that I recognize. This is the one straight line and the other straight line for the neck and everything else here is quite dark. This can be really playful. Face is a little bit too wide so I'm trying to, I'm just trying to tighten these lines a little bit. Now what I like to do for the face because this skin has some tone, just use my pencil to basically tone the face. So my approach for drawing these is tied to how I paint because I always think about how I would paint this. I'm gonna use a blender just to give this face a little bit of a very light blending. You don't have to make it look like there are no marks. I don't like that kind of blending. It's just like cover it. Now let's notice more shapes within these large shapes and if you squint your eyes a little bit here we marked the line for the eyebrows but let's not think about eyebrows and eyes individually. Let's maybe draw this entire part. Looks a little bit like pocket for the eye, like sunglass almost. That includes the eyebrows and the eye in it. And here is another one. This one is even like darker than the previous one. Now here there's this shadow for the nose. We made a line here but this shadow is, this one is very dark. You don't need to make it dark right now. Just mark that it's there and another small darker shape is here. That is the nostril here and then there's another one. You can make it simple shape like this. I just like to see some value already in these areas. We can adjust the features later but here is a value, here is a value, here is a value, maybe here is a little bit of the value too. If you want we can blend it a little bit. Now the portrait is already starting to appear there but the features are not so visible, like everything is quite vague. This is exactly why I like to introduce value so early because the reference photo isn't really made of construction lines. These lines are something we invent to help us organize the face and what I actually see in the reference are just shapes of light and dark edges and contrast. So for me it feels much more direct to start drawing that information as soon as possible and I can build the smaller features on top. If you were to put the reference on the side, change the direction of your reference, you would still see the shapes and you could adjust them. This could help you even to find mistakes. Here is another shape, here is another shape, like here's some shape that's slightly darker. Now I can actually perceive from this angle that my forehead is a little bit too big so I'm going to make it a bit smaller here and here and also I can see the direction of some lines a little better than from the top view and here also that part was a little bit too wide and this is too wide and I did not see it from before. I could put my reference photo completely upside down and I could now question these shapes that I put down before. Here, just remember not to press and not to use the tip of your pencil because it would be hard to get rid of those harsh lines or values later. I could even smudge with my finger to be faster, sometimes if I'm pressed with time I do it like this. This is a bit too dark, this part should be lighter. All right, this part is like really dark but it's up to you which part of the portrait you want to draw, maybe not the entire part that you see on the photo. Put return and that's much better. So this is actually one way to help yourself with the mistakes already, it's just one super helpful trick. No matter if you're drawing or painting, this really helps. It just forces your brain to stop assigning function to individual features, like stop thinking this is an eye, this is a nose, disturb the pattern for you and will force you to only observe the shapes and contrast. Now you can see that the face is already starting to emerge and of course that I want to build it further but this is going to be very satisfying part. I notice now the highlights and the highlights are super abstract shapes but we need to emphasize these parts in our portrait. Here, here I use the kneadable eraser or sometimes even this white eraser. It helps me basically to sculpt the face, it's super helpful. Here I just want to lighten and don't need to be completely light but lighten this part here too and here too. The small eraser, this is an eraser in a pencil that I love to use for these kind of highlights and highlight needs to be super precise, like try to get the position of the highlight as accurately as you can do. And here is another small highlight, here is small highlight and because I already start to see the eye without actually ever drawing an eye, I did not draw the eye yet. Here and here and maybe a little bit here. On the lips too, like here is very strong highlight. Here, around this corner of the mouth could be lighter part, not completely, I don't see a strong highlight but just lighten this a little bit. And inside the ear there is here is a bit of a highlight, this part is lighter. There's two ways to go about it from this point. For me the easiest part is now to focus on the dark and then connect. Distinguish between these three levels of values. This is the lightest, this is basically all mid-tone. Let's now do these darks. I actually have a that's super useful for darks. This is 8B pencil, but you can use any soft pencil, any B pencil, even 2B if you press harder, then you can get these dark lines with it. Don't worry, you can you can do with this, just the contrast will not be so strong. Now, I don't actually have a sharp tip yet, I just want to focus on all these really, really dark parts. Here, for example, I see super, super dark shape, so let's try to reproduce it. And here, again, I will try to use flat part of the pencil, not the tip, to cover an area super fast with it. Here is another in the hair, here is another really dark part, here is another. And since this is supposed to be just a sketch, you can be more loose and don't aim for some finished look. Because sometimes I tend to ignore the accessories, but like maybe draw it a little bit in between this earring, this mid part of the earring, there's dark, here is dark, here is dark. The wider part of the pencil, I keep trying to remember that this is how it's best to do it. Also, here's the silhouette of the face, it's pretty much in shadow, but I need to try to press the pencil so I get nice wide part here. Okay, this is much better. I like this kind of strokes to use them. You don't have to obsess about this hair, try to watch for direction and try to just find the darkest parts of the hair. Just draw these darkest parts in between and see what it looks like. You can always add more tone if you need with your pencil. This is good information for the hair, she's got dark hair. So now let's finally do the maybe the eyebrow part, but we already know where to place them now. This part, just make it a little bit darker. Now maybe let's add a little bit more tone here. So to emphasize these darker parts, here also darker parts. And maybe let's use the blender around the eyes. Here on the nose we have the highlight. I lost it again, now I'm going to add it. But besides the highlight, there are darker areas on the nose. We can use blender to emphasize this here. For the other as well. And it was quite easy to know where it sits because the underlying tone values really helped. I'm sometimes nervous to place these iris parts, so I tend to use blender for it. Just do it with blender. Everything that you're worried to place, you can use blender because the line is not threatening. It's not set in stone. It's very light, incredibly easy to erase. So I find that useful. And here we need to be super careful about this shadow. Even just adjusting this line if needed. Here's the highlight in the iris. There is this shadow that follows the lash line. And to now maybe address the nose more. And this shadow over here is super dark, like incredibly dark. And now the corner of the mouth. The darkest parts of the mouth is the corner of the mouth. And then the other corner over here. Here I don't like to draw the outline of the lips. I like to draw here the shadow underneath. It already looks better than if you connect everything. And here there's just a tiny bit suggestion of the teeth. It's not an actual teeth. Like you can make this division, but only from one side. Like only for example here, like only from the bottom. And maybe I would add a slight tone to the lips. Slight tone over here too. This is the shadow side, so here the tone will be more more profound. So use this pencil, this less dark pencil, because it can blend better. And here you can again use the pencil eraser to just lighten some parts. And then add the darkness. Add some darkness. Here is a very strong shadow over here. And the chin is a bit too high. You need to get it a bit lower. Everything is just about observation and trying to adjust. So in some areas I don't have sufficient values. Like underneath the eyes we need a little bit more value. A little bit more mid-tone here on this cheek too. You can add with the blender, but you can also add just with pencil and just use hatching. Depends on what you what you want. Here is there's more hair and tone here in this part of the portrait. Here is more shadow too. Wherever I notice that my contrast isn't quite what I see here, then I adjust. Pencil or eraser, it's going to be really fun at this point. I like to just maybe emphasize the silhouette a little bit. Maybe add some background. These small hairs in here maybe more sharply drawn. I want to maybe put more contrast around the eyes because she has this dark makeup. And if we don't make it dark enough, then that's gonna take the likeness a little bit. I don't like to obsess over sketchbook drawings, but just type it. And here the tongue value need to be more. And she's got a little bit of the freckles. I like to draw that very much. And the mouth also needs like mouth gets a little bit darker here in the corner. Maybe emphasize some of this structure and freckles with the blending stick. I'm just now trying to push the contrast even a little bit more. Here's just some small parts that you can add. You don't have to, but you can. And I think the eyes should be darker. This should be in general darker because these are brown eyes. So yeah, now it maybe looks a little bit more like her. Ah, the eyebrow needs to be here closer to the eye. So I'm still not quite happy with some features of this portrait and how how some parts of the portrait turned out. So I want to just do tiny little fixes to make it slightly better. Maybe this angle of the face is not all that accurate, but I can adjust this pretty quickly with the dark pencil here too. Here maybe we could go slightly darker. And I feel like I've lost some of the highlights. So maybe here a little bit. A little bit. A little bit. Just emphasize with this large eraser. And here definitely help a tiny bit. You can use the kneadable eraser just to give the face a little bit more like sculpt this a little bit more. Make the value difference a bit more profound. And I feel like this is a little bit more sharp on the reference photo right here. And here I ignored this. The goal is just to capture the basic idea of this face. So now these highlighted parts of the dirty hair you can cover them a bit more with the pencil marks if you want. I hope this approach helped you a little bit. I hope you put it into practice and try it out. It is really fun for me to draw this way. And if facial proportions are still something that you struggle with, you can watch my step-by-step guide to drawing faces next. There I break down the proportions and each individual feature there. So that makes a great follow-up to this video. And I will see you in the next one.