Step By Step, How to Draw Faces - Inverting Should Be the First Thing Beginners Do!

What's the first step you normally take when you begin a drawing? Almost certainly you start out by thinking. By imagining what the finished piece is going to look like. How proud you'll feel of it once you've mastered drawing.

I bet you don't think about how you're actually going to start the drawing itself, you only imagine what it will be like after you draw it. Right?

Maybe you've already done a bunch of drawings, but every time you've drawn someone's face, it just looks like a horrible caricature, laughable and embarrassing.

But every time you sit down to do another portrait of someone's face, you probably think, "All I need is practice. I'll get this eventually." And yeah. Of course you'll get better as long as you keep trying.

But there are better ways to practice, and I think I can tell you how you could be doing so much better. It is difficult to draw a realistic looking face, but it's not because you're particularly terrible at drawing, but because you're not really drawing the original picture you're trying to re-create.

In fact, what you're doing is drawing the expectation your brain has come up, of what the final piece is going to look like. You probably aren't spending anywhere near as much time really looking at the original, comparing it to what you are drawing right at that moment, and whether it really looks like a realistic face.

So instead, don't get frustrated at yourself for not "trying" hard enough or anything like that. Instead, try this. Invert the original picture. Turn it upside down.

Heh, stay with me. Yes, keep it upside down.

Now try drawing.

It's gonna be difficult, trust me. You probably don't even know where to start, maybe your mind is still reeling a little from how... how wrong it is to draw this face, upside down.

Don't worry, you'll get used to it. Right now, your brain just doesn't know what in the world it's looking at. And that's good. Because it means it won't be tricking you into having expectations about how the final picture will look like. It won't have a single clue how this is going to turn out.

And that means you're free to actually draw what you're looking at in the original picture. You'll completely naturally spend more time and focus on each single part of the drawing, how you're drawing it, and how it compares to photo you're using.

And you're also very naturally going to think you're drawing is absolutely terrible. Even if you're making good progress and nearing the end, it most likely looks terrible to you. Because you're brain still can't recognize it. It doesn't look like anything you're used to, or anything remotely like what you initially imagined.

But keep going. Keep going one step at a time, drawing in little details, shading in all the right places... and don't turn it around until you're done.

Now compare this to the original photo, compare it to your older drawings. You're sure to see a huge difference. Most likely it still won't be a masterpiece, or even close to it. That's where the practice comes in. That's where learning all the good techniques of drawing photo realistically, and getting all the right drawing equipment, comes in.

But now you've set yourself up for a good attitude to your drawing. You'll naturally have better focus and be better able to really see what you're trying to draw.

Do this technique with every picture from now on. Every so often, not so much in the beginning, but later on, try drawing a picture that isn't upside down. Try and see how much you've improved on your very first piece when you also drew the "correct" way up.

And don't give up! This first step is one of the most important, about building good attitude and mental fortitude. Because drawing a good, photorealistic picture, especially something as detailed as a persons face, takes time. Time and patience.

Article Source: Step By Step, How to Draw Faces - Inverting Should Be the First Thing Beginners Do!

Drawing Courses:

Pencil Drawing Made Easy
What really makes this course stand out from the rest is that it goes much deeper than any of the other courses I have seen. There are even classes on how to draw material textures and hands. For more info click here

Drawing Secrets Revealed
Incorporates brain research and proven drawing techniques to provide the more organized, easy-to-grasp training for artists who want to improve their drawing skills. For more info click here

IllusionMage
Create your own 3D animations. For more info click here

Realistic Pencil Portrait Mastery Home Study Course
A "truly" step-by-step guide showing you how to achieve a certain outcome with helpful descriptions. For more info click here