- 1). Get a reference photo of an Asian American whose face you'd like to draw. The photo should be large and clear enough to draw accurately from.
- 2). Form the face's outline: At the center of your paper, draw a rectangle that's one-third taller than its width. Draw an oval whose extreme vertical and horizontal edges skim the corresponding edges of the rectangle.
- 3). Lightly draw the following guidelines onto the oval, using the rectangle as a reference: a vertical line through the rectangle's center; the eye line, a horizontal line through the rectangle's center; the nose tip and mouth lines, a horizontal line at one quarter the rectangle's height, measured from the bottom, and another at one-eighth the rectangle's height.
- 4). Lightly draw a reference triangle to locate the center of the eye's pupils: draw a downward pointing equilateral (all sides equal) triangle positioned so the bottom point is at the intersection of the nose line (from Step 3) with the face's vertical center and right and left points are on the eye line. Try out different horizontal locations until the lengths of all the triangle's sides are equal.
- 5). Lightly begin sketching in the nose: Draw a short upward-opening curve at the nose point. Depict the left and right sides of the nose's bottom with a "C" and backward "C," respectively. Space these "C"s equally from the face's vertical center.
- 6). Form the mouth opening: Draw an elongated "M" whose center is at the intersection of the mouth line and the face's vertical center. Draw the shadow of the upper and lower lips with slight curves located closely above and below the "M." Make the distance from the "M" to the top curve the same as the distance from the "M" to the bottom curve.
- 7). Form the eye outlines: Draw two slightly flattened ovals surrounding the eye points you drew in Step 4.
- 8). Form the eye's pupils: Draw two circles whose centers are Step 4's eye points.
- 9). Adjust your face to match Step 1's reference photo: For each of the features you sketched in the foregoing steps, study carefully the corresponding feature in the reference photo. For example, look at just the outlines of the eyes in the photo. Note the size, shape and shading of the lines, then immediately correct your drawing to match these aspects. Repeat this process for the remaining features in the photo.
next post