Hard at work

Gabriela Robinson

All of my drawing students are now hard at work on their self-portraits. We have spent the last two weeks working on proportions of the face and sketching individual parts of the face. 

Here are some things to remember when setting up for a self portrait:

Sketch an egg-shaped oval and divide into halves both vertically and horizontally.

The two horizontal halves are again divided in half, providing 4 equal segments of the head

The eyes are located on the center line, the brows a quarter of the distance around the eyes.

The mouth is one-third the distance below the nose to the chin.

The hairline occupies approximately the top quarter of the head and brow. 

Setting up these guidelines is essential in getting correct proportion.

Shading an essential component to creating your eyes. You will need a soft pencil, kneaded eraser, and most important blending tool of all, your fingers! 

Drawing the eyes

Start with the sphere of the eye lightly drawn. Keeping in mind the bone structure around the eye. 

Draw a second sphere for the other eye, leaving ONE EYE WIDTH between the two. 

(see image below)

Draw the eyelids curving over the sphere as shown in the second sketch. Notice the lower lid has a different contour from the upper lid- and the lower lid casts a shadow upon the eyeball. Without this shadow, the eye will appear to be "popping"- too prominent. 

Draw in the eyebrows at the top of your sphere. Be sure to add texture for the brow hair. 

With your fingers, blend in the shadows around the eye socket, "sinking" your eye into the head. 

Now put in the round, colored iris, add the black pupil in the center of the iris. Make this very dark. 

Look carefully for the shiny while highlight,

 and leave the tiny area of the paper white -or lift in out with the eraser

Study your eyes and add eyelashes only where you see them.

 Check the alignment of the tow pupils by laying your pencil horizontally across them, making sure you holding it straight and not tilted.

**This method is indispensable no matter what medium you're using to draw or paint eyes**

This also works well on aligning the ears and straightening up mouth or the nostrils