3- Drawing facial features and drawing shadows
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Adding Shadows Is Much More Subtle But So Satisfying...
Facial Features And Drawing Shadows. On this page:

1) Capturing subtle shapes, lines and shadows
2) Foreshortening


Some heavy concepts today and YouCanDraw.com member Suzy Voye's drawings

Let's jump right in. Today we're going to look at some common problems encountered while drawing complex facial features - namely lips and mouth. (Yes we talked about this a little last time.) Today we have the advantage 
of having some real samples to talk about. I must thank Suzy Voye of Tennessee for her willingness today. She agreed to let me use a couple of her drawings so all of us may benefit.

Suzy has been absolutely courageous in her drawing efforts over the past several months and it's really starting to show! (These copies really don't do the originals justice - I had to shrink the files before I sent them out. 
"Shrinking" or compressing causes loss of detail.)
 

The strength of "line" and blending to shadow

Look at the first illustration just below - it's a drawing of a 3/4 view lips, and a front view of lips on a cylinder. Suzy's capturing the shape of the lip wonderfully here. She's doing a very effective job shadowing (squint 
and look at the lower pair of lips on the cylinder - see the depth come out?). I think what's bothering her however - and I'm guessing at this - is the possibly more cartoonish look than she wanted. "If we can name it, we 
can conquer it!". (Ludwig von Wittgenstein or Sigmund Freud said something like that. If they didn't, I did! :- ) And I think the problem falls in the area of line strength. When you squint, the lines soften. Now lets go after that effect without squinting.

Lips, for me - especially when caricaturing - are the hardest thing to capture. And that's because the lighting and light/shadow shapes are so subtle. It gets confusing! When you look at picture or photo of the mouth 
(any mouth), notice how few hard lines you see: the upper margin of the lip and the shadow that's formed between the upper and lower lips - right there where the two touch - are the hardest, i.e. darkest lines of the lips. 
The rest of the lips really are a mix of shapes. The lower lip is much more definable as a group of shapes or shadows - rather than single lines. 
3/4 view lips, and a front 
view of lips on a cylinder

Through thick and thin

Look at the second picture (just below), - it's the larger lip picture. With your eye, follow your way all the way around the outline of the lips. Notice how there's not really a single line that makes up any one part of 
the lip? Even the upper margin of the lip, straight as each segment is (by "segments" I'm referring to the 4 individual pieces of the flat "M" shape), each segment is probably a combination of 3 or 4 light lines. 


Second Picture: Loose lines that imitate shadows
combine to form the margin of the lips

Take a moment and look at it. Do you agree? How do you make those thin lines look like realistic? This is where pure contour drawing comes in beautifully. The lines are more of an impression that when perceived as a whole by the viewer look real. The "impression" I'm talking about is the recording in pencil of what you, the artist observed with your eye. Shadows on curved surfaces, like the lip, drawn as blended shapes are easily interpreted by the eye. "Blended" just means a gradual gradation of value from light to dark. 

So softening the lines and gradually working into shadows represents reality more closely than do harsh lines. Let me say that again. You get a more realistic picture of complicated features if you blend shadow and line. 
Cross-hatching is an excellent way to pile up lines for shadow shapes.  --- you'll need your member password to see this page --- click on this link and sign on up if you aren't already a member...it's ridiculously inexpensive:


The famous disappearing lower lip

Another detail of the lower lip: in bright light, the "red" of the lower lip almost disappears. It's very difficult to differentiate between the red of the actual lip, and skin tone of the area just beyond the lip and on to the 
chin. The transition between the two is very subtle - and it occurs in the middle of what still looks like the pulp, the bulge of lip. Often a highlight - the reflected light - obscures the border altogether.
In fact, it's actually easier to draw the lower lip by default. How do you do that? By drawing the shadow shape of the shadow underneath the lower lip.

To summarize: to get a more natural looking lip, use several small light lines in place of a single harsh line for the "hard" lines of the lip, and blending of shadow shapes for the softer edges. Excellent start Suzy! 


Assignments: Thought you'd get out of here without some work? :-)

Assignment #1: Observe closely the subtle shapes and shadows of the lips on REAL people. Look at the transition of the "red" of the lower lip back to skin tone (it's a subtle but definite line - also called the "vermilion 
border". This is outlined in more detail in the Lesson 13 on Lips and Teeth).

Assignment #2: Don't be afraid to draw lots of lips! Trace 10 or 12 of them. Then try them freehand. Fill a whole 2,3,4 pages of a drawing pad wit nothing but lips. They will come.

Assignment #3: shadowing. Spend an hour doodling with cross-hatching - the little flick of the fingers (on short hatches) and the flick of the wrist (on longer hatches), is a simple skill that comes with practice. I use it in 
combination with smearing all the time. In fact, try this: make a shadow shape. Scribble on a sheet of paper with pencil until the pencil's so thick it shines. Now gather up some of the lead rubbing a Kleenex or your finger 
right into it. Take your pencil-lead loaded finger-tip and make some kind of spontaneous random shape on the top half of a clean sheet of paper. On the lower half, try and re-create the shape with nothing but cross-hatching. 
Use more layers of hatching where the pencil lead is thicker.


2) Foreshortening

Foreshortening is the name given to the way an object seems to change proportion when you view it from different angles. This is different than perspective - perspective is the way an object changes in SIZE with 
distance. They're related - but they're different ideas. (In caricature in you can get away with mixing both - still your caricatures will be much more controllable if you understand how to use both.)

In Suzy's next pair of pictures, she advancing to drawing the mouth and teeth. (See following picture). These are excellent starts - they're both very complicated pictures. Suzy does a precise job of capturing depth (especially over the tongue and in the back of the mouth. In the originals here I can see all the way back into the pharynx in the picture on the right - right down to that little tear-drop shaped thing hanging down ion the back of the mouth (this is called the "Uvula"). That's awesome detail Suzy! And get a load of the shadow across the tongue - it's contoured exactly how the tongue's shaped. I certainly get the full three-d effect here. 


Suzy's excellent mouth illustration


Where Suzy's having a little trouble is again within the lips. And I think that can be cleared up with a few intense sessions of drawing nothing but lips. (Suzy you really are tackling about 5 lessons in one in this drawing!) Again by squinting I can see the shadows make sense. You've captured the three-d effect expertly in the picture on the left - where the philtrum (also known in stuffy academic circles as the "booger canal") curves into the upper lip. That's very effective. 

As we move north in both pictures we run into just a little problem with the nose. Both these pictures are "three-quarter" views. The most difficult problem in a three quarter view is keeping the proportion and the "planes" straight. 

Ok, I know I'm confusing you now...planes...foreshortening...proportion...yea, it's a jumble - and this is THE most difficult part of drawing: where perspective, proportion, light and shadow - where they all meet. And they all meet right here in Suzy's picture. Lets get down to understanding some terms here - and lets do it by example (I know I'm getting long-winded again ;-). 

Here's an example of foreshortening - you can do this right now in the comfort of your own home. 

 
 
 
Drawing the facial features
 
And I'm guessing you've looked at the first two Drawing Basics pages. (If not click here for Drawing Basics and here for drawing Basics II.) You saw the basic skills of drawing and you saw their application. You got an inkling of the kinds of shifts you need to make in your brain to make drawing so much more doable, and entirely within your grasp.


In this section, you need to keep applying those basics of drawing: recognizing edges, negative shapes, angles and proportion, light and shadow (and seeing them as shapes). This is where you begin to chew on the real deal of what it takes, what you need to learn to draw faces, portraits or caricatures or anything for that matter).

 
In his book "Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters", Hale points out how all the Masters became masters of anatomy before or during their apprenticeship as artists. They developed intimate insight into the external anatomy (muscles and bones) of the human body well beyond even what most modern day physicians can tell of today.
 

Not only could they name all the bones, muscles, bony prominences, bony fossas, protuberances, muscle insertions, origins, and functions, but they could draw them accurately, in proportion, with drama - and the kicker: from memory! (Show me one physician or one artist of today who can do that :-) (They knew their stuff. By the way, no disrespect to doctors or artists intended.) In those days they didn't have computers or all the learning aids or distractions that we have today.

 
Do you really have to learn all this stuff?

Do you have to memorize all the facial muscles and their actions to draw portraits and caricatures? Heck no. But can it help, for example, in recognizing what's causing that amazing line around the mouth? Absolutely. You'll be able to make sense of why dimples form where and how they do, as well as make sense of how crow's feet form and look the way they do.

That movie star look - what causes that? (Some will say a prominent maxilla placed over a strong mandible. Does it? Heck, I don't know, but they all seem to have those) And what happens to the bones of the face as we age? Do they start sagging too? (In fact the bones don't change significantly - it's the aging of skin tone and the amount or lack of extra tissue (fat) under the skin that gives that aged look. )

But you don't have to know any of this. It all helps to know about this stuff to make the best pictures possible, but you don't have to have it all memorized to get started. Heck no. You'll know when you want to learn more about anatomy as you progress. It's a very natural step. You'll know when you get there. In fact, you just learn it as you go through the right kinds of lessons.

 
 
 
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