Improve your drawing skills with this handy step by step tutorial. Learn how to draw a fabulous girl!
Step One: Conceptualizing
1. Let’s begin by finding a good clear image to work from.
Step Two: Frame the Image
2. We’re going to draw guidelines of where everything is in the frame to make things easier for us. This is the top of the hair.
3. Draw a line for the top of the skull. This should be above where the forehead starts.
4. The chin/jaw.
5. And the bottom of the neck which is subsequently the bottom of where her hair falls.
6. Next, I’m drawing a vertical line down the side to help us out more with facial feature placement. Look at how much space each facial feature takes up. You should be studying how big the forehead is in proportion to the chin, where the bottom of the nose falls and its relation to the eyes, and so on.
7. Let’s place a tick mark where the top of the forehead is.
8. Now a tick mark for the top of the eyebrow, which is also the bottom of the forehead.
9. A tick for the top of the eye or eyelid.
10. Now the bottom of the eye.
11. Bottom of the nose. If you look at our guidelines, you’ll notice that the nose (which begins around the top of the eye) is the longest feature on the face.
12. Now it’s time to mark down the top of her lips.
13. Then the bottom of her lips.
Step Three: Add Lines That Position Her Face
14. Since her face is on a slant, let’s make things even easier for us to draw by adding slanted lines starting where each tick mark is.
15. Let’s make another line where the center of her face is.
Step Four: Remove the Image
16. Now, let’s take away that image and see if we can do this all on our own!
Step Five: Establish the Shape
17. Draw an oval for her face. Remember that the top and bottom of that oval should hit where our “top of skull” and “chin/jaw” lines are.
28. Let’s draw two slightly curved lines for our neck.
29. Next is that shoulder, which is nothing more than the top part of an oval.
30. Now for the other shoulder.
31. Let’s draw the hair now. We should start out rough as drawing hair is a pretty complex process. We’ll begin by drawing the exterior shape her hair takes. It kind of resembles a heart.
32. Now we can draw in that ear, or the bottom of it at least. The bottoms of your ears land close to the bottom of the nose or top of the lip. In her case, it’s the top of her lip.
Step Six: Begin Drawing Facial Features
33. Next comes the eyes. We’ll start by drawing an oval in that area. Nothing too fancy yet!
34. Do the other eye.
35. Now, let’s draw a curved line for the bottom of her top eyelid.
36. Now for our iris, which is nothing more than a small circle. However, let’s remember that it is partly covered by her eyelid so we’re only drawing a portion of it.
37. Get that other iris in there.
38. As a placeholder, let’s draw some curved lines that take on the shape of her eyebrows. She’s got some good healthy brows.
39. And the other brow.
40. On to the nose! Let’s draw a circle that rests on our “center” line, the bottom of which touches our “bottom of the nose” line. Hm, I’m getting major clown vibes now. Let’s keep moving.
41. We’re going to draw another smaller circle on the side of that big nose circle. This will become one of our nostrils.
42. Now for the other side of the nose.
43. Let’s draw in our nostril holes which should be two small ovals that intersect the big nose circle.
44. Now we can draw our lip shape. It’s basically an oval with pointed sides. Or perhaps you can think of it as two arcs joined together. Whatever floats your boat!
45. Next, I’m drawing an “x” where our Cupid’s bow will land. A cupid’s bow is the double curved shape that our top lips take at the very center. It is said to resemble the bow of Cupid. Fun fact, huh?!
46. Next we’re drawing the inside of her lips, and because her lips are slightly parted, we’ll add an oval as our lip opening.
47. Let’s draw an oval for our chin.
Step Seven: Remove the Frame
48. Now, let’s finally remove those guidelines.
Step Eight: Perfecting the Eyes With Ink
49. It’s time for ink! Or a really strong pencil. Let’s start drawing in the inside of her eye.
50. There’s that handy tear duct. Is it ok for me to cry yet?
51. Now to separate the tear ducts from the eyeball.
52. Next is that iris.
53. And then we draw an even smaller circle within the iris. We call this the Pupil.
54. To add some pizzazz, I’m drawing in a “reflection” or highlight into her eye.
55. Next, I’m inserting her eyelashes.
56. Now for the eyelid crease.
57. The bottom eyelid crease.
58. Here I’m drawing some more lines around her eye to add more shadows and textures.
59. Now repeat those steps for the other eye.
Step Nine: Perfecting the Nose With Ink
60. Time to ink that nose. Draw curved lines on the outside of your outer nose circles. You can stop where the center of your nostril hole is.
61. Then, we’ll ink around our nostrils. I didn’t make mine a full circle because that’s just how I roll.
62. Next, I’ve added some lines around the bottom of her nose to give her some depth. I like to do this so that the space doesn’t seem so empty.
63. Draw some slightly curved lines for the bridge of her nose.
64. Now we can draw in that Cupid’s bow, a double curve.
Step Ten: Perfecting the Lips With Ink
65. And then we draw the rest of that top lip.
66. The interior lines of that top lip.
67. Our bottom lip line.
68. The interior bottom lip line.
69. While we’re down here, let’s draw in some teeth. You only really see her two front teeth so let’s just draw the bottom of those.
70. I’m adding some quick curved lines for the chin. Not necessary but something I personally like to do regardless.
Step Eleven: Perfecting the Eyebrows With Ink
71. Here comes those eyebrows. What you should be doing is drawing some curved short lines starting from the bottom of your eyebrow lines to the top. Like so…
They should eventually curve more in a horizontal direction the further you get to the outside of her face.
Oh wow, we’re done with that one already!
72. Repeat for the other eyebrow please. I stopped about halfway through this one as she has some hair covering it. No point in doing extra work, right?
Step Twelve: Framing Other Features With Ink
73. Now it’s time for her face line which starts at the end of her right eyebrow and ends at her ear.
74. Speaking of the ear, let’s draw that in too.
75. Ink in the left neck and shoulder lines.
76. The other neck line.
77. And the other shoulder.
78. Next we draw in the top of our arms, shoulders, and chest.
Step Thirteen: Making the Photo Realistic
79. Since she’s twisting her neck to look at the camera, there’s some creases that appear. I’m putting those in here.
Step Fourteen: Add More Guidelines for the Hair
80. Alright, now it’s finally time to do that magnificent head of hair! Let’s draw in a few more rough guidelines to help us keep track of the general direction her hair is falling.
Do the same for the other side.
Step Fifteen: Drawing the Hair
81. There are different ways to draw hair. The way I like to do it is drawing each individual strand. Tedious and time-intensive, I know, but it gets some good results in the end. Here’s one strand.
82. I’m going to lay out some other individual strands to help you understand how I’m doing it.
Ok. Now away-y-y we go!
83. Aaaand it’s all done! Just waiting for that Carpal Tunnel to kick in!
Step Sixteen: Erase the Hair Frame
84. Erase those pesky sketch lines. You can totally stop here if you want or add some color with me!
Step Seventeen: Add Some Color
85. Here’s our color!
Step Eighteen: Shade & Add Texture
86. I’m also adding in some shadow to give her some more depth.
And there you have it! One order of “girl” coming right up!
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