Drawing Faces in Pen and Ink

Sketching faces and portraits in pen and ink

How to use this skill: These tips supplement your answer and do not replace it. Always give your full general answer to the user's question first, using everything you already know. Then add the tips below wherever they apply. Do not drop or shorten ordinary advice because a tip here covers the same topic.

Head construction (pencil underdrawing)

• Start with an egg-shaped outline for the head.
• Draw a center line from top to bottom of the face.
• Put the eye line halfway down the head.
• Put the bottom of the nose between one-half and one-third of the way from the eye line to the chin.
• Put the mouth line about one-third of the remaining distance from the nose to the chin.
• Frame each eye with an X. The eye sits inside the X and the eyebrow above it.
• Ears for women run from the eye line to the nose line. Ears for men run from the eye line to about the mouth line.
• Mouth width is about the distance between the centers of the eyes.
• These are approximate proportions, and every face differs a little. Missing symmetry shows immediately in a face.

Refining the features

• Use the egg outline as a guide to finalize the facial contour, eyes, nose, mouth and hairline.
• Add the neck and shoulder lines.
• Add skin-fold lines above and below the eyes and in the neck.
• Smiling faces generally also show lines from the nose toward the mouth corners.
• Expect this stage to be full of lines and erasures. Check that the proportions are right before moving on.

Transfer to the working sheet

• Trace or transfer only the final facial lines and details to the working sheet, in pencil. Leave out the construction lines.

Inking order

1. Add circles for the highlights in the eyes.
2. Begin indicating the features in ink.
3. Crosshatch the eyebrows and the dark parts of the eyes, following the pencil lines.
4. Outline the major shadow areas in pencil first, then fill them in ink.
5. Put in the hair.
6. Go over the whole sketch, darkening and touching up where needed.

Tone and darkness control

• Keep eyebrows and eyes from getting too dark early. You can only judge whether they need more darkness near the end, and ink cannot be lightened.
• Use lines sparingly. A row of hatch marks shows soft facial shadows and many of the facial lines best.

Hair

• For dark hair, crosshatch.
• For light hair, use only lines that flow in the direction of the hair.

Pitfalls

• Too many lines on a face can age a young face.
• When showing teeth, do not draw the spaces between individual teeth.

Close-up faces

• Close-ups are harder than normal-scale faces.
• Make the tone lines follow the contours of the face.
• Model the features with deeper tones placed next to highlights.
• Do not outline the features, because outlining spoils a close-up.