Female Face Practice

Here's a collage of face sketches I've done over the past week, with varying levels of sketchiness. Continuing the drawing faces from imagination with no reference thing, where my track record has mostly been "they look like dudes or horrible child/dude/woman combinations", or last time, with "her nose is absolutely cyclopean, and she is ugly" from a few people.

Regardless, faces continue to be one of the most interesting and challenging things to draw. I had fun with these, and I think they turned out better than usual. My goals here, aside from "draw better, it's fun!", is to be more prepared if anyone says "Hey internet person, here's $500, draw this science fiction/fantasy scene", as those types of illustrations almost invariably involve an attractive woman, regardless of hostile environment, plagues and malnutrition, the apocalypse, etc. So, working on filling holes in the portfolio.

Aside from likeness issues, I don't have problems making good faces from reference, so the current problems are from the lack of structures and features I have stored in memory, and maybe getting them mixed up with generic and masculine ones. I think more reference work is in order, but I'll pay extra attention to individual features like noses, as well as overall facial shapes, cheeks, jawbones, etc. And hair, since I have no idea what anyone's actually looks like. Also, I'll push more towards mainstream beauty, as my tastes tend to favor unique and strange faces that a lot of people don't like.

Let's see... #1 has huge features, giving her a slightly bird-like look. #2 is fine, but she looks like a highschool student and I got annoyed at her smile when I was drawing it. #3 and #4 were more challenging to keep feminine, with the long face, and then half-bald head. #6 and #7 are possibly too sketchy to say for sure. Also, I still get a little weirded out by doing this. When I stop and take a look at these, I get two or three impressions of real life people I've subconsciously based them on. It's usually an amalgam too. I can pick out about 12 people on this page for example.

Excuse the huge post. It helps me to write things down and think about it.