Drawing head #001

Let me preface this by saying I am not a professional drawer. If someone says something different, they're probably right!

3/4 view is so tough!! I'm sure you'll agree that your 5 min is better than your 10 min. Specifically: the ear is postioned like a face-on-view and needs to be rotated closer to the eyes. I know you didn't finish the back of the head, which would have helped it a little. Also the eyes are a little squished together. The neck should be moved a little more to the righ to originate at least at the lowest point of the chin (if not more).

In your 5 min, you let the eyes breath so the spacing is great. You also drew a little bit of the skull going behind the ears, which helped position it more realistically.

Responding to your question. Our eyes are instinctively drawn to contrast (which usually means the eyes). You can't get more contrast than white circles with black dots in them. So, work on those to get most bang for your buck. Then work out from them.

Here's my opinion: Head shape in the 5 min is great! Keep that. I think you are curving your center eye line too much. The center eye line does not need to curve up on the far side of the face. Your 1 min 3/4 view has a good center eye line. Straight from his left face side to the right, only starting to curve up when it reaches the right cheek bone. Your 5 minute eye line is too curved. But why does it look ok? You compensated for it by having more of the left eye above the line and having the right eye centered on the line, essentially removing your curve. Remember that positioning in 3/4 is the same as frontal: Split the head in half, that's your eye line; split the lower half in half, that's the bottom of the nose; split the bottom split in half, thats the bottom of the lips.

You're doing great! 3/4 is a pain that I still struggle with.

Nice job on the overall facial proportions and angles, kumotori, that's very perfect job you've got going there on the 5 minute sketches of faces!!

Well, if I was to give you a completely and extremely honest criticism here, is that the 10 minute one is a bit too awkward in the relationships here, a little bit too rigid here. Why don't you please collect yourself with 159 minutes of 20 second theraputic warm-up face sketches??? (159 x 60/20, 9540/20=477 quick expression sketches in a day.)

The reason why you could and would be able to do this critique is as a result, you'll be able to lose the stiffness in the facial relationships, and to make them feel more, more, and more dynamic energetic and fluid. For more info, be sure to look at the 2 Walt Stantchfield books on Amazon, if you haven't already.

So, cheers, good luck, and I hope you've found these totally and absolutely useful and concrete.