by You Can Draw In 30 Days The Fun Easy Way To Learn To Draw In One Month Or Less (pdf)
Whether it is using a clear clipboard to capture an outdoor scene, or using your thumb to measure an object in the distance, tracing will empower your confidence. My point is this: Why reinvent the wheel? Why ask students to sit in front of a model and insist they draw the model without teaching them the most basic tools—shading, shadow, size, placement, overlapping, contour, foreshortening, and the other important drawing laws? Why not have students learn how to draw the human face, figure, and form by tracing the greatest illustrators in history?
For this lesson, I’ve traced a study of Leonardo da Vinci’s Angel of the Madonna of the Rocks. I want you to trace this image with a pencil on twenty-five-pound translucent tracing paper. Trace this image ten, twelve, or twenty times on a single sheet of tracing paper; don’t worry about the shading yet.
1. Trace the beautiful face,
forehead, cheek, and chin
with an S-curving line.
2. Trace the nose and the
foreshortened nostril. Notice
how the tip of the nose is
bulbed, as is the bump over
the nostril. Draw the nose
ridge flowing into the eye-
brow above the far eye.
Notice da Vinci’s use of the
drawing law of overlapping.
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3. Take your time tracing the soulful eyes
using the drawing law of size. Pay close
attention to how da Vinci solved the chal-
lenge of creating the illusion of depth by
drawing the near eye larger, by overlap-
ping the eyelid over the pupil.
4. As da Vinci did, frame her face and
forehead with a few wispy simple
S-curving pencil strokes of hair.
5. Draw her lips. Notice how the upper lip
dips down and how the center ridges
under the nose line up with this dip. Look
at how the lower lip is made up of two
round shaded spheres.
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6. After tracing this image about ten times
(for about twenty minutes or so), begin a
fresh sheet of tracing paper and trace her
lovely face again. This time begin shading
by removing your tracing paper from
Leonardo’s drawing and placing it on a
white sheet of paper. Now, study how da
Vinci shaded her face. Where did he posi-
tion the light source? Where are the
darkest three areas? Where are the light-
est three areas? Very lightly shade the
three lightest light-reflecting areas. It’s
always a good idea to move from light to
dark. You can always add shade to make
an area darker; it’s much trickier to make
an area lighter.
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7. Shading from very light to very dark,
study and copy how Leonardo defined the
curve of the forehead, eyes, and cheek
with blended shading, which we first cov-
ered in Lesson 1 with the simple sphere.
Enjoy studying and copying how da
Vinci shaded the eyes, eyelids, pupils, and
tear ducts—such elegant shading this
Master Artist had! Can you imagine
Leonardo shading the same tear duct you
are? Can you imagine his creative thinking
process when he overlapped the lid over
the pupil? (Do you feel like you are artisti-
cally channeling da Vinci right now?
Can you e-mail me the true secret of
the Da Vinci Code?)
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8. Keeping the tip of the nose nearly white to reflect the light, shade the nose with blended pencil strokes. Pay attention to how da Vinci shaped the nostril with only blended shading without any specific hard defining line. Delicately, gently, shade the lips, lightly shaping the two round spheres in the lower lip. Define the center line that separates the upper and the lower lips with two S curves. There you have it.
Learning the nuances of drawing the human face from Leonardo da Vinci himself! I urge you to draw several more of these tracings with complete shading. Da Vinci filled sketchbooks practicing, copying, and studying a single face, a hand, an ear, even toes. Google the sketchbooks of Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Rembrandt to get inspired to practice.
Tracing by Ward Makielski
LESSON 28: THE HUMAN FACE
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Lesson 28: Bonus Challenge
By Ward Makielski
Tracing faces and figure drawings from the great Master Artists is a confidence-building exercise that I hope will inspire you to successfully study, copy, and trace many dozen more faces and figures by da Vinci and others.
This tracing exercise is really fun with photographs as well. Try it out: Pick your favorite photo of your special someone, enlarge it on a copy machine (set the machine to black-and-white grayscale mode if possible; grayscale black and white photos are great to copy/study/trace because the shading really reveals itself).
This is only one brief simple lesson to creatively nudge you to explore more books and illustrations on the human face. Here are two must-have books on the subject: Lee Hammond, How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs, and George Bridgeman, Drawing Faces.
Keeping in mind what you studied from da Vinci’s drawing, let’s learn how to draw a face looking straight at you. For centuries, artists have divided the human figure into mathematical sections in order to transfer the image from the real world to their paper. Let’s practice drawing a human face together. I wonder if you will be able to tell the difference between my cartoon style and Leonardo’s masterpiece?!
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1. Begin the human face by drawing the head as an oval egg with the slightly larger end at the top.
2. Draw a vertical line down the center and a horizontal line near the middle. This will be your guide line to position the eyes.
3. Draw another horizontal line halfway down between the eyes guide line and the bottom of the chin. This will be your nose guide line.
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4. Once again, draw another guide line halfway down between the nose and the bottom of chin. This will be your lip guide line.
5. Separate the eye guide line into five spaces. Start in the middle with two lines and work your way out.
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6. Shape in the eyes in a lemon shape with the tear ducts facing in. Shape in the nose from the edge of the eye down to the nose guide line with a light rectangle.
Human eyes come in many shapes and sizes. We will be exploring these in the next lesson.
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7. Detail in the eyelid and pupil. From the center of the pupil, draw vertical lines to position the lips.
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8. Draw the lips, remembering the contour curving shading from your study of da Vinci. Shape the nose and the eyebrows.
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9. Did you know
the average head
weighs sixteen pounds? That’s as
heavy as a bowling ball. Remember
this when you draw in the neck; it
has to hold a lot of weight. It’s not
a Popsicle stick; it’s a thick cylinder.
The neck starts at the nose guide
line, tapers in for the throat, and
then tapers out as it leads into the
shoulders. Sketch in the hairline
halfway between the eyes and the
top of the scalp. A common mis-
take is to draw the hairline too
high, so use your guide line. Now,
draw the ears using the eye and the
nose guide lines. Begin the hair
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using flowing S curves, keeping in
mind the overall shape of the hair.
10. Shape the forehead, temples,
jawbone, and neck. Draw hair like
da Vinci did, with a few defining
wisps. Enjoy shading this face with
blended shading. Remember to
start at the lightest areas first
(think of where your own face gets
sunburned first): the center of the
forehead, tip of the nose, and tops
of the cheeks and chin. Focus on
keeping these areas reflective and
almost white. Add gradually darker
shading away from the light
source, which for this drawing is
above and in front of the face.
Excellent job! You’ve studied
the genius pencil lines of Leonardo
da Vinci, and you’ve learned the
mathematical grid structure of the
By Ward Makielski
human face.
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Student examples
Look at Michele’s drawing of the human face lesson below. She did a wonderful job using her own style to interpret the lesson. She has a much more realistic style as compared to my more animation/comic book style. Great drawing, Michele!
By Michele Proos
Thanks to fellow art educators Allison Hamacher and Ward Makielski for their considerable help with these lessons.
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L E S S O N 2 9
THE HUMAN EYE
OF INSPIRATION
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T he eye. Without a doubt, it’s my favorite thing to draw on humans, creatures, animals, aliens, robots, and, yes, even marshmallows, as I’ve done on my national public television series. The human eye is most definitely the window into a person’s soul. But how to capture it?
To draw the eye in 3-D, I first want you to grab a small mirror. I want you to prop this mirror up next to you while you are drawing at the table. I want you to be able to look closely at your own eye as we draw this lesson. This is a technique I picked up from my visit with some of my alumni students at Dream Works PDI a number of years ago. The animators were working on Shrek, and at their drawing animation stations they had several computers, monitors, multiple drawing surfaces, and, interestingly, two mirrors on either side of their drawing tables. As the animators worked on drawing different parts of Shrek, I could see them scowling at their mirrors while drawing Shrek’s scowling face. I saw them holding their hands up in different positions while drawing Shrek’s hands. It was so exciting to watch these world-class artists bring Shrek to life. Now, let’s add life to your own sketchbook—
let’s draw the eye.
1. While sitting at your table, look into your mirror. Now, look a few moments longer. . . . What a gorgeous miracle you are. Just look at that image! Those eyes!
Those lips, nose, ears, hair, what a perfect model to draw from. You traced da Vinci in Lesson 28; now you will drawing from the most perfect eye model on the planet—
yourself! Very lightly shape the eye. For
this lesson, we will draw an eye that
resembles the shape of a lemon, with
the bulb of the lemon facing the nose,
shaping the tear duct. As you draw
more eyes (and you will no doubt draw
hundreds more, they are so cool to
draw), you will notice there are as many
variations for eye shapes as there are
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people on the planet. For this lesson we
will use a simple lemon shape.
2. Look in your mirror, and take a close
look at your left upper eyelid. Notice
how the creases follow the contour
shape of the eye. Draw the upper eyelid
starting at the tear duct.
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3. Draw the perfectly round circle of the
iris tucked under the upper eyelid just a
bit. We are applying the drawing law of
overlapping. Remember that the iris is a
perfect round circle, not an oval. Look
into your mirror. Look closely at the
thickness edge running along the top of
the lower eyelid. Interesting, tiny details
like this one are what you want to look
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for and draw. These are the details that
will really give your eye drawing the
“wow” factor. Without them, your draw-
ing will not look realistic.
4. Look into your mirror. Look closely at
the pupil in the center of your iris. Notice
the perfect roundness of the circle.
Notice the tiny spots of reflection inside
the black circle. Draw the perfect round
circle pupil in the middle of your iris.
Lightly block out a small circle shape to
reserve for the light-reflection effect.
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5. Look into your mirror. Look closely at
your pupil again. Look at the deep black
of the pupil and the brightness of the
reflection. Draw this deep black pupil
with the light reflection.
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6. Look into your mirror. Look closely at the iris area around your pupil. Look again.
Now, look again. Just an awesome play of light, color, moisture, shape, such detail!
When you are drawing the iris, use pencil strokes radiating out from the dark pupil, and use a variety of line lengths, some short, some long. When you start experimenting with colored pencils, this is the lesson I would recommend you start with.
(Using colored pencils to draw the iris is . . . how would I describe it? A transcen-dental experience!)
7. Draw your gorgeous eyebrow. Draw individual hair starting at the bridge of the nose and moving across the brow. Draw with flowing single lines, angling the hairs more horizontally as you move away from the nose. Begin shading the eye along the inside of the eyelids.
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8. Look into your mirror. Look closely at your eyelashes. Notice how your eyelashes are clustered in small groups of two or three, not just single hairs. Notice how the eyelash groups start on the very near thickness edge of the upper lids. Notice how your eyelashes curve away from your lid, following the contour of your eye.
Draw a few groups of three eyelashes. Pay attention to your placement. Be sure to draw them at
the very near edge of the lid. Pay attention to the direction of the curve of the lashes. Be careful not to draw too many eyelashes, and avoid drawing them too vertically (or else you risk creating what I call the “spider effect”).
The next step is shading. This is the lesson step that really pops your eyeball right off the page! There are five specific areas to shade. The first of the five shading areas is directly under the top eyelid, the full length of the eyeball. The second spot is along the bottom lid, above the thickness line, directly on the eyeball. Keep this very light shading at first; you can build up more dark contrast later. (If you start too dark, it will look like some very heavy Goth black eye makeup, unless of course this is the look that you are going for.) The third area is the little crease at the top of your eyelid, the line that separates your eyelid from your eye socket. The fourth shading area is the bottom of the eye socket, darker in the center corner near the nose and tear duct. This shadow is blended and falls into the cheek.
As Leonardo da Vinci used blended shading to define Mona Lisa’s eyes without any hard edge dark lines, you too can use blended shading to soften and define your 3-D eye. Be sure to darken and blend the fifth area of shading in all the tiny nook and crannies in the corner of the eye socket and eyelid.
By Ward Makielski
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Lesson 29: Bonus Challenge
I love drawing eyes. The more you draw, the more you will enjoy them. Eyes are the single most important element in drawing the human, animal, or creature face. Draw several more eyes in your sketchbook, a few more from looking in the mirror, and a few from searching “How to draw an eye” on YouTube. There are some incredible amateur video tutorials you will thoroughly enjoy.
Student examples
Take a peek at how these students practiced this eye lesson.