Just a couple of months ago, I decided to take one of the amazing Make Art that Sells courses which was a little self-paced course called ‘Drawing Faces’ (Part of “Lilla’s Art Recipes”) put together by the amazing Lilla Rogers.
I am so pleased I did it! As a child, all I used to draw was people and strange caricatures, often with contorted features, like gargoyles. I loved nothing more than drawing a good face.
But as time passed, my obsession with drawing towers, piers and other such forms took a strong hold and I stopped drawing people altogether … for years (apart from in Life Drawing classes taken during my Masters Degree).
With the renewed resolution to follow my heart into children’s book illustration I am now returning to that rusty domain and overcoming the fear, of lips, eyes, noses, head shapes .. time to embrace it all!
The course was perfect for just losing the fear and experimenting with different styles too, as Lilla suggested a range of material and techniques. Thanks to her materials suggestion I rediscovered my love of the charcoal pencil for creating those lovely tapering lines.
We started off with tracing faces, just to get a feel of how features and their placement can vary so much from one individual to another. I traced Oprah Winfrey, then Ian McKellan and David Bowie. Wow, who knew ears could sit so high up one person’s face, and so low on another’s!
Then there were experiments with face shapes, eye shapes, mouth shapes and also varying the scale and distance between features. Finally came the very exciting style mash-up which involved picking random features and putting them all together on one face (such as bushy eyebrows, long curly eyelashes, a pierced nose, stubble, and cupid bow lips!)
It was a great way to loosen up and stop seeking perfection when drawing faces. I have put less pressure on myself to find my ‘perfect style’ for drawing faces and just let all sorts of different styles emerge. I learned so much and feel much braver to tackle faces head on, in all their messy imperfect glory!
The section on children’s faces was so helpful, especially as I am looking to do more children’s book illustration.
There was also a whole set of daily prompts provided which provided practice with all sorts of different angles, emotions and scenarios.
Below you will find lots of my exercises completed during class, and the final animated GIF I created based on one of these sketches, which I developed further using digital media.
I highly recommend taking the ‘Drawing Faces’ course and indeed any of the Make Art that Sells courses to anyone wanting to build up their illustration portfolio. Go check them out here!
Below is a face I decided to develop further, from my initial rough sketch. She started as a quite intensely staring lady whose hair started flowing, so I decided to add fishes to it, and as she developed she almost became a bit of a Sea Goddess. I decided to animate her, as I love playing with animation. She eventually ended up becoming my announcement image for “Our Planet Week” (Stay tuned as there will be a whole post all about that coming very soon!)
