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Drawing: Draw Your Muse

First step is to draw our muse and the key to why this is important. Why this face is important is you want to have the identity on the page, reflect who you envision wearing it best example is some of you mentioned doing custom work, you know, for individual clients, and if all your sketches are blond and blue eyed and you have a customer who has brown hair and brown eyes, she can still appreciate the value of the sketch. You know, it's a beautiful sketch, and it has great information but it's one step removed from her seeing herself in your work so that's, another tool for your sketching is that you can put your customer in, you have to represent them exactly, but put the feel of her so she could imagine how that would look with her hair color, their skin color, all that kind of good stuff. So to create your muse, you're going to focus on these things we have up on the screen. So with the face you're creating an identity with the body, you're exaggerating the figure and some people h...

ave varying opinions on exaggerating the figure. Usually in fashion drawings, we exaggerate length. And although that's associated with tall skinny models um it's also a way of putting a lot of information in an area that we have most information but when you're drawing really small it's hard to do which is the torso so this area usually has a lot of information it is shared alone the placket the buttons that the pockets the patches so working really small sometimes it helps to expand the figure a little bit but traditionally one of the reasons for having sort of a quote unquote skinny model is at the host the clothes hang on her and it's not about the person's body it's about the actual clothing so a lot of times they are called hangers or manikins even in an older in older circumstances they're models are referred to that as the mannequin or the hangar s o that the focus is on the clothes that's changing more now because we're getting more athletic form conscious clothing so now we're want to see some of that that body in motion in close so that becomes a little bit unaltered native if you're interested in that kind of like with your brides how do you like you know they might want to see that more robust figure so um and then attitude projecting a persona because you want to have an attitude in the sketch and then a brief kind of reference to digital which is just a new alternative canvas because if someone doesn't have computer skills yet, they shy away from using the computer and again just like with hand drawing it's about taking each of these steps and applying it with the tools that you have available to you on the computer, right? So let's move on so the first one is the face now this thiss depiction is just showing the varying steps, so doing a basic face with features adding makeup in detail and then adding hair now the premise of all of this is always to think silhouette first, just like we did with the clothes earlier and then informing that by breaking it down into areas and putting in details so let's get started for the face. One of the things we we want to do is we want to have a clear line down the center of her face and you could draw that line, but I normally work in tracing paper first so I could do many innovations and so I'm going to fold my page in half you yes, you can go you guys here and at home um you can go along if you have the tools and if you don't have tracing paper with you, you could do this with a piece of regular paper because it's all about the creases it's not about seen through for this particular step, so I sold it in four and what I what I'm doing here is I'm giving myself four zones I like to save paper, you do not waste, be wasteful, so I'm going to draw my face primarily in one's own, and then we're going to use the tracing paper as a layer to do the different steps to see how she evolves. Okay? So in this first section is gonna pull this in half again so they'd have a center line for her face, and here we go. You want to think about placement on your page. So if this is your canvas, this is the space you've allotted for your face. You want to give yourself a little room on top in a little room on the bottom so what? You know, it could be two fingers, three fingers, whatever. So I'm just going to give myself a little mark on that line on the top in the bottom, okay, so that's, my fold line that's the center of her head and the top is just telling me, don't go any further and so is the bottom. Okay, now, um, at first you can draw on oval and notice that I changed the orientation of my of my paper to suit my needs, so I'm right handed, and I prefer to draw an oval sideways than up and down because it's more awkward for me so I'm just going to do a big oval and it doesn't matter how perfect it is just a guideline so with this guideline I want toe pick which side I think is more representational to the side of her face so I'm going to say right here and I'm just going to give myself a border so basically I'm sculpting I'm creating this block and I'm going to keep sculpting now everybody should have the top bottom and the side and the side you wanted to be parallel to your center line and don't worry about being perfect that is not what we're going for you were going for in the vicinity way don't have to be perfect so now the other side of this I can judge in two different ways I can say ok, use my pencil and say ok from the center line to that edge that's how far it is and I could do the same thing here until you know tell me that that's the size you can also because if you're working with facing paper folded back on the half line and make sure you have on actual reflection and I was actually kind of right there so that's good so you have the other side way work I'm getting this balanced because that's what we're usually people kind of wonder a little bit if they do pretend is thinking about the you know the features might be a little lopsided and you know the face might look a little wonky and this helps create a really strong foundation the bones so to speak s so now since we want an oval we're just going to square off these top lines and to create a nice curve you just wanna pick points like here this distance make it the same distance from here to here and then use your hand to act it's almost like like a compass so that you could do a nice curve between the two so you're just joining two points you're just creating a little curve and you do the same thing on the other side and then you have a head the top of her head is oval but there's a little flatness on top which helps it look more real ok so now we're not going to do anything with the bottom part yet because all the information from the bottom comes from where the features air placed on the face so some basic math we're going to cut this face in half this center line is where the eyes go then from that eye line to this base line halfway is where the nose goes then halfway between the nose and the bottom is where the mouth goes and already we're starting to see a face even with just lines because we're recognizing our brain is recognizing the proportions and everyone's a little different again. We always work with the middle. You know that, that middle zone. But remember that the beauty of this is once you have this baseline, you can look at someone's face ago. Oh, her eyes are a little higher up. So if you want to capture that look, you're going to raise your eyes a little bit. So that line becomes a guy that you can lift or lower. So now we can draw the rest of her face because we have some important information. One is the mouth we have where the mouth is. And if you follow your mouth along to the side, you get the hinge of the jaw. So that is where the jaw is going to start and then you just have to pick how wide you want the chin to be. So I'm going to go say, that's, my chin and I always think of a ventriloquist dummy. You know how they have those little lines here. So that's the that's, the point for the chin and then you connect the dots. You go from that little bar to the side and to the side and now you have the rough of the shape of the face how we doing any questions, all right, so, uh can you tell us again, j somebody was asking online toes again why we're starting with the face before moving on to other birds it's really I think it's really important because you want tohave that identity I think I have actually all my students too their first exercise after they draw the faces to create six different faces based on the same one and just change lip color eye color hair style because once you're designing for someone, you're not working in a vacuum and even though it's sort of like a drawing it's not a real person it's important, I have them named them you know, this is jenny, this is susan and also try to think about who they are because we all have friends who we know well where certain things and won't work certain things and we want to get that way about our music we want to know that this is my more adventurous girl, so I'm going to give her ah stronger draw line and a cooler haircut and those are things you want to think about when you're creating the face because it helps you so all right, so the face um then we, uh we can always soften it like if you don't like a strong jaw line, then we can start acting like a sculptor and just start cutting away to soften her jaw and her chin and all of a sudden we have this nice canvas for her features and usually the neck is about halfway on both sides so that it's big enough to support our head because some people drive really skinny necks in some really big teo check in with our studio audience and here I heard some giggles over there how are you guys doing this is just this is this is the exercise this is the play that freedom looks like an alien right now well, like I said before that means we're halfway there way haven't even put any features and so well it seems very high okay, well what do you think we're missing hair and most people will just add here that at the top if we take the measurement from the mouth to the chin like with our pencil we can we can figure that out and we put that same measurement here that khun b we go straight across that is our hairline and then we blend it because a lot of people will add the hair on top and we have to remember that our hairlines come you know, deeper into the circle and this is also everybody's hairlines different so we can go higher a lower depending on the look we're trying to create uh for for years we're going to a little cap here and at about the nose a smaller cap and just connect them his ears can be really complicated, but for this view it's pretty simple and then we're going to a little hood we're going to go start on the outside and going about halfway and we have a little shell of any earth yes little calf little cap and then connect them and then just do the little hood coming into the face and there's a important detail here they're, um is easy to forget this hairline that we created doesn't have any hair on the side of the head so right about here we want to go out just a fraction and blend that so she has a little hair of the temple okay, so we have our map this is our map for our features so let's do the features over on the side separately because we know where they go. The first thing is the I and for the eye we want a top, a middle and a bottom so I create three lines. This center line is this line the top lines you can think of kind of like glasses, right so above the eye and below the eye. So we have this and we want to figure out we need to decide how wide we want that eye to be here on our line. We want to give ourselves a little room in the middle for the bridge of the nose and way always I can forget to this little space on the side of the face, so I bring in a little here and it's a really big guy, but in fashion drawings it's kind of nice to exaggerate the eye, but you can modify it as you see fit s o we decide how big that eye is and that's right here. Most eyes are based on a variation on an almond shape they pinch in at the sides at some point, so we use this middle line as a guide to start the point and toe arc over to the other one and we want to kind of hit the top of that line. Then we do the same thing on the bottom and we have an almond shaped now you can do a lot of variations with this by how wide the boxes and how tall the boxes so you can have a very round, boxy I or you could have a longer I so remember you change to state the shape of the box, but keep that idea of a sort of ah nam in shape and you can do almost any I now we're going to put, um, the iris in the center, which is just gonna be a big old circle, and that gives us her her eye, but we need to add something so that she doesn't look terrified because right now she looks a little scared, so we need to come her down with her eyelid and it's, just another arc but lower and the reason I put it might ask why I put the circle in first is because if we put in afterwards, we can run the risk of putting it in under the lid, and it doesn't relax the eye it's still this steri eyes, so if we could do this and cut the top off on a little arc like that, then all of a sudden that cuts off the top of the circle and relaxes the eye a little bit. Now, with this side, just a little side tip when we're coloring in this eye, you could do this after you color something in, but you can also leave it out is leaving a little tiny arc like, if you do a smaller circle in here and you color that one in, you get a little highlight on the I, um, next up our eyelashes and eyelashes, I kind of have a rule, a ceased when we're working really small, three, five tops, so I usually we have eyelashes coming out in all directions, but when we're looking head on, what we really see here kind of the ones going out to the side, so I do from the middle one two three and then maybe two smaller ones in the middle and that's enough to give her a little lash and notice quality of line is very important so if I draw this I have a very sort of stilted flat curve but if I do this and lift off the pencil it tapers off into nothing in that creates more the illusion of a lash or for something else it might not be for that but this is the first place we kind of see it. Yes, I just wanna jump in and help liberate she says these tips are so good on and I'm still here mesmerized as well how did you what was the process for developing this sort of step by step I started I mean, I was taught to teach I mean, I was taught to draw in a certain way and that was great. I mean, it was kind of more of a traditional sense with like, uh, fashion terms you hear a lot about nine heads and all these different techniques, but I really can't keep coming across when I started teaching people who are just like, terrified of, you know, uh those techniques where they were broken breaking it down so I really kind of really distilled everything to the absolute most basic thing because when you do this then you can transform these shapes but this is the foundation of all those things like if you were to abstract features, this is what it comes down to, so fashion time says I feel like the eyelids for some reason are difficult well, it's it's the same it's basically just a lower arc you're still going from here to here, but what you might want to do is pick a point, maybe halfway and draw the ark in there you don't want to go straight across because it'll flatten out the I I should say you don't want to because styles that could be a cool thing I never say no to students after they've done my version they can come up with other versions but yeah it's just an ark like the top one it's just a little lower and the key really is to cut off that top of the iris or the circle so next up is to finish off the eyes the brow and I have a little you can have all different types of brows I always think of ah certain formula to keep thie arch of a brow kind of dramatic and what I do is see this line right here the angle for the inside of the I I will go up a little higher and follow that angle can everybody see that? So I followed that angle and then when I break the eyebrow when I arch it I make sure that it's at least two thirds of the way over because if you do it in the middle it looks like a mountain peak, okay? So if you go three quarters of the way and unfortunately the word eyes there so you could break it off by going straight or at a little bit of an angle so this right here this line becomes your brow and again, that quality of line is important that last little tip you could kind of lift up the pencil and then you don't have to put a lot of hairs in there. I mean, you can, but you could just go heavier with this side and then blended and, you know, not have too much of a point on it and you have a very simple eyebrow, and again, you can have very heavy brows, very light eyebrows, you know, anything you want, really? So when we put this in, oh, and a little tip I'm going to show you here when I when I put this I if you start the bottom but don't finish it, don't go all the way across, you'll get a much more open I aa lot of times when you put in that bottom part, it could get look heavy makeup, so if you want a more innocent look, you can choose not to finish it so now you have your eye with an eyebrow in the face and, um, for in the beginning, everyone always feels like I've used tracing paper it's a bit of a cheat. It really isn't it's a training tool, so if you're having problems getting both eyes symmetrical or lined up the beauty about why we suggest the tracing paper, you could fold it in half and draw that other eye. Now the one thing you have to be trick one little thing you have to be conscious of is the virus if you drew it even remotely to the side or to the inside, you need teo do the other one so that she doesn't look wall eyed or cross eyed, so you just need to move it over just a little bit. But if they're dead center, you can duplicate the eye. Yes, just tell us again how you took the the shape of the eye that you drew a little bit bigger and then placed it into the face with yeah, I used the center line as the basis, but you could also draw in the top, okay and the bottom and then box it off and those steps can help you kind of manage, because a lot of times you could do the eye really big. But when you're working on your croquet, you're working really small, so any and all guidelines that we do separately, we can put into this map, I call it really the face map that where you're putting in the features and again, where you have the line for that map, you can elevate the eyes, lower the eyes, you could do a lot of different things, all right, so now the nose is made up of three little circles now for the nose, you don't need a lot of information on the sketch, the nose is often downplayed, but if you're doing costume and want to do a more prominent nose because the character that's more the look, I'm going to show you from scratch, and then we can take the simple notation away from it. So we're going to do one little circle and two little circles on either side and that's basically mickey mouse, right? So what we're pulling for here is the relationship between these circles, so we're looking for the connection between them. I'm gonna draw a little harder, so you see, and here the curve in between those circles gives you the nostrils right between those circles, and then the tip is the tip of the nose, and then if you want to, you can emphasize the outside of the nostrils by taking this side and doing that and then obviously you wouldn't keep the circles in the sketch but you can just do tip of the nose and nostrils I like to keep the nose a little simple but you can go around and add more information too to the nose has everybody doing I love that everybody's sketching all of you said you wouldn't sketch so now the mouth is three circles as well and it's about the relationship between the circles but now they're start there's stacked up in a little triangle and the key to any mouth is the relationship between these circles in the middle so it's over that circle under this circle and over that circle that will give you the opening of the mouth and most people no matter what the shapes of their mouths are have that little dip in the middle and then going over on the sides. So underneath the middle circle and over the other two we'll give you that perfect little dip and the sides of the mouth you can depend on a could depend on whether you want to go real serious or real smiley so if we go straight across it could look very serious but I like to turn it up just a little bit to make her look like she's remotely happy okay she's happy to be in that dress and then a tte the bottom of the circles you bring them across and you have the bottom lip and that top circle you can cut a little you or a little bee into the circle and then you just connect the that to the outside you go down and this is I always do this little cupids mouth because that's the first thing I learned so it's my go to but you can again go wider or or fuller and I just draw a couple of variations so you can see so if I go really big and oval this way I still have up down up but I have a very different shape mouth just depending on how wide how you know the ellipse whether it's perfectly circle or more oval and you could do that up and down too so we can have very sort of long mouth wide mouth a lot so and then here I'm going to do a version of the mouth without this sort of implies a finished mouth in terms of makeup if you just do the opening and a little hint at the bottom you have a nude mouth right so no lipstick you just have that opening and just a little shadow underneath the bottom lip and if you're doing a very a cz you could notice she looks very innocent there's a there's a sweetness and openness star face because not everything is super defined right so she looks almost uh younger or more innocent or sweeter okay now again everything that you see about your sketch that you may not like what you want to do instead of going I can't draw which you can is to look at that look at what you don't like and figure out what it is that you don't like so say oh, that mouth is too small or she looks first or she looks too big or whatever it is and make the modification and you don't have to start from scratch each time you can put another layer tracing paper over it, copy all the good stuff and then do a variation and change them out saying, why don't I like that mouth isn't too small is a too wide and make those adjustments very simply. Okay, well, you pause I'm going to give a shout out to michelle be who has been a student here a crate of live a regular for many years and michelle says, wow, wow wow! I have never seen this done perfect best lesson ever wow, just breaking it down on people are loving the bubble lips thank you I love it. Thank you. So now we have our face. So one thing I do say I'll repeat this when we do the figures well in a minute way want to think about how to correct things and a little exercise that I used is to turn your sketch upside down because you will immediately see things that are askew or out of proportion or longer on one side or shorter on one side when you turn it upside down our face, isn't it automatically correcting it to see a face we see just shapes and we'll know right away if something's off and you'll see that probably better when we do the, uh, figure as well, but it works with the face for anything you're doing really so one last thing for the next version of her and I'm gonna I'm gonna use the tracing paper layering just so that we can see the difference is we're going to talk about hair because ah lot of times with hair people will put way too much information in the hair like to too many lines because we're actually trying to draw every single hair and get it documented. What we want to do is just like we talked about what the clothes is to create a silhouette first so you want to say, what is your hairline? Is there apart? Let's say right? So if we give it apart, give her a part and then say is it short? Is it long doesn't get kind of like we talked about silhouettes that they get wider at the top wider at the bottom are they round so here I'm just going to do kind of a triangular shape bye little softer and you can draw a triangle first if that helps and then start to cut it away but here her neck here I'm going to say it's short it goes to her neck so there we have she's got a short haircut, right? So the silhouette is first because I'm going to show you two different techniques for texture, which is the next step how to break this to oh, I'm sorry it skipped over when you want to think also locks of hair, the big chunks of hair in the hairstyle you're almost thinking like a hairdresser and I'm going to say I want a piece of hair going over her face like that another one here and that gives you these big you know, if there are any bangs or big chunks of hair now that's that that's her haircut but she may have different types of hair if it's straight, you would just follow in and add a couple of straight lines again. You don't need a lot of them and maybe a couple of lines in here and that is all you need because once you start to put lots of lots of lines in there, it starts again very, very heavy and the reason this is all you need is because when we start to color this in, we're going to color in the whole shape first then we're gonna add some highlights and some low lights with same color, and then just a couple of accents with pencil, and because of all that layering of color, you'll get the essence of hair. But let me show you also hear these air kind of big waves, so that could be an alternative to straight, but then we can also do curly and curly if I don't do a straight line around the edge and do these little seas and s is and I break that line up and even here in this chunk and start to fill this in s and you want it all to interlock and it's just little sees and s is, and you're starting to see curly hair emerge, but within the hairstyle, so it'll take a while for me to fill this in, so I'm going to assume we've got that. Yeah, ok, so so and you can also even do sort of a kink hair with a little bit of a kink to it. So for instance, with these hair, these straight hairs, you can kind of break them up and you can do here that has kind of a rougher texture to it, so we have big waves, we have straight, we have curly, we have hair with a little kink, but you again you want emphasize silhouette shapes within the silhouette almost think of them a style lines like we saw in the dress warm and then texturizing and giving them the style of hair okay, all right, so you are uhm desire to make this approachable and attainable and doable to people is coming through yeah, yeah good thank you all right, I was going to tear this because I want to use this other sign all about saving the paper so the other thing you can do is changed her identity with color, so I like to come up with little formulas for color just like you would if you were buying makeup and look at how different she looks if we color in eyeshadow if you color in the areas with the soft palate oh, a little tip when we're coloring in that upper lip we could go a little heavier a little darker and then go soft or use the side of the pencil to color in the bottom and we get that natural shadow and my son will go very soft outline the eye lashes put in the notes for the details and here I'm going to say her hair is soft and wavy and blunt and we see a particular identity right? We can associate her with a certain look softer if we take the same piece of paper and give her the silhouette very severe and it's basically like playing with makeup let's, give her a really dark eye color. Once you've done all the work to come up with the structure of the face, it will add a little color to this just so you can see the difference come in a little bit. We have two very distinct girls. Hold it this way. Probably, um, two very distinct girls from the same exact structure. So remember, once you create the bones, you don't need to reinvent it every time. Not that you shouldn't evolve and try different shapes and different features, but just to show you the versatility of creating this, and like I said, this will help kind of interact with your your audience, your customer, so that it reflects more the attitude and the look of the actual client.