How to Draw a Realistic Face - Step by Step Drawing Tutorial

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I'll go to walk you through slightly slower how to draw a realistic face. I'm using the b-grade pencil and I'm doing this to lightly sketch out everything before I go in and shade. It's really important that you do it really lightly because if you make mistakes it will be really easy to erase them, and you probably will make mistakes because you want to make sure that your sketch is really accurate before you go in and do lots of shading. It's common to make little mistakes and have to erase bits here and there to make it a spot-on as possible.

When I'm doing the eye I'm not just doing it really wide and really circular. It's a lot smaller than you might think it would be and also I'm looking and making sure that I'm looking at the shapes of the tear ducts and I'm also making sure that I add in a water line when I go in and shade it as well. When it comes to the nose as you can see are blocked in where the nostril is, but it's not a circle it's just a slightly oval shape. I've also outlined the mouth but it's nowhere near as dark as it was before and I'm just going in and I'm outlining all the general clumps of the hair. Once I finish outlining everything, I'm going in with a blending stick which is a really great tool for blending and I'm using this to soften out the sketch a bit. I'm starting on the eye and I'm going in first with that extra hard charcoal pencil and I make sure I sharpen that before I went in and used it here and I'm just using this to mark out the pupil, the outside of the Iris and also the upper lashline as well. The shading of the white eyes, it wasn't so dark so I didn't want to use the charcoal pencil otherwise I'd get too much for the grainy dark looks, so I went in and used the Derwent B pencil instead.

Wherever I'd need to do really light shading, I will use the graphite pencil rather than the charcoal pencil because charcoal pencils are really dark so you need to make sure you only use them in dark areas, otherwise just use the graphite pencil or charcoal powder. Once I blocked in the general shape, I'm just going in with the blending stick and I also use it to add a bit of value around the contours around the eyebrow as well. I'm also darkening that up again by adding a little layer of graphite and blending it out. Once I've done that I go back in and I darken up some values and I'm just looking for identifying which parts need to be the darkest and which parts need to be the lightest and I'll try to avoid adding direct charcoal on to any highlighted areas. For the really really dark areas, I go in with the 4b pencil because it is really dark compared to the extra hard pencil so I use the 4b charcoal pencil just in the really dark areas. I'm going in with an eraser and I'm using this to pull up some highlights and you can really easily lift up the charcoal. When I do the eyelashes I'm adding the eyelashes from the bottom of the waterline, make sure you do this because there is the water line separating the eyelashes from the eye, next I'm doing the eyebrow and to do this instead of just doing a block shape I'm using the fine lines with the charcoal pencil and feathering in the hairs and then I'm building at the darker shadows on the darker more fuller parts of the eyebrow.

I'm going to start working on the nose and third I'm using that Derwent B pencil to shade in some general contour areas. Now I'm working on the nostril and looking to see the darkest part is. I keep blending that out to make a really soft transition because as you can see it is just really stock shading there are no real harsh lines. On the mouth, the first thing I did was drawn in the teeth using the extra hard charcoal pencil. Once I've drawn in that center line under the teeth, I then go in and start building up some of the shadings. I used a white charcoal to color in the teeth and give it that realistic look. Then I go in and build up some of the texture in the lips. Next, I'm going to be working on the skin. I am using the 4b charcoal pencil and shading very lightly to create some really nice shadows. The main contour is the cheek. Make sure that you're looking for the contours because that's what really makes you drawn it realistic because every face will have specific contours and shadows and highlights.

I'm going to start moving on to doing the hair and I'll go to look at the hair in terms of clumps. I'm just going to use lines that go with the motion of the hair to really start building up the structure of the hair. I'm going to be doing this in a few different layers and slowly darkening it up over time. First, I'm using the extra hard charcoal pencil and I'm just using this to get in the general foundation of the hair. When you're doing portraits you really need to be flexible because sometimes you might do the hair and then parts of the face might look like they need to be darker so don't just think that one area is finished. Make sure that you're flexible and coming back to it and adjusting things if you think that it needs to be darker or certain bits need to be lighter. There are highlighted areas in the curls and then either side there can be shadows as well. Make sure that you look for those darkest areas and it's really important that you get those dark areas as dark as they need to be and the highlights as light as they need to be because the contrast is what is really going to make your drawing look realistic. I've got in that first layers of the hair, I'm just going in and adding some of the shadings to the neck and the jawline when you do the neck it's really important just to start slowly as a little bit of charcoal and you can always build it more if you need. I'm going in and darkening up the hair where it needs to be darker and slowly building up the shadows. To do this I'm using the extra hard charcoal pencil.

Using that white charcoal pencil to just add in some highlights, for example, the white of the eye and also the white highlights on the inside of the iris and adding the majority of highlights in the hair. You can also create this look by using an eraser to get really fine details but for now, I'm just using that white charcoal pencil to create some of the hairs and some of the really fine highlights. That's basically it for today's tutorial I really hope you guys found it useful. Thank you, everyone!

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