Many artists struggle when drawing faces and capturing a likeness to their models or references that they are drawing. Capturing a likeness and having your drawing come alive is difficult if you don't understand the process well. Understanding some basic tips can help you bring a likeness and emotion to your drawing as never before.



When you start your drawing, you will want to remember that when you are doing your block-in, you want to draw the lines pretty light to start. Block-in the hair, the head, the neck, and shirt if you are going that far down.

One of the best tips that an artist can remember right now is to stay big. Don't worry about little details and trying to refine your drawing yet. This is not the time to do this. When you block-in the head you'll want to keep the hair mass separate at first. Also, a tip every artist needs to know is to always treat the hair as a mass. You never want to get caught up in drawing all of the hairs on someone's head.

Now you can use measuring to help you with your proportions and finding where the placement of features go. Divide the head into visible plains. As you do this, you will be using more geometric shapes now, they will be more angular, and sharp as you start in with the features. You will start to refine now, refining shapes and taking them to smaller shapes now. Then you will want to draw the contour.

Once the contour is drawn, values need to be established. Values are established by dividing the light from the shadows. Look and see where your light source is coming from. Sometimes artists neglect doing this and it can be dangerous to your drawing.

Continue this process of refining and working on your values. Some artists like to increase the tone at this point to help refine the features more and add detail. Finish your drawing off and make sure that you have your values correct. This is a major part of capturing a likeness to who you are drawing.

Remember, drawing becomes more natural the more you do it. Keep practicing and you will soon get better at drawing and capturing the likeness of your models. Try going to drawing classes or local schools to do life drawings every week. This will help you and you can watch other artists as well. Sometimes, other artists may have tips that can help you with certain techniques.