Side profile illustrations are pretty simple to draw once you know the basics and how they’re buit.
Yet get one thing wrong and your character may look wonky and off!
In this tutorial, I will guide you through my process of creating side profile illustrations from breaking down the profile, to sketching, lineart and ending with coloring, rendering and extra effects to beautify your final illustration!
Stick around till the end and let me know if you found this helpful =)
VIDEO version
🟨 Side View Breakdown
It’s easy to trace a reference or 3D model directly when done right, but most of the time the result will look lacking and unpolished.
When you know what constructs the side view, however, your sketch will look a lot more polished and refined even if you use references or rely on 3D models
Let’s quickly look at what makes the guidelines and why they’re there.
🔶 Loomis Method
This method is pretty straight forward, you start with a circle (or sphere) and cut it, add guidelines and refine til you obtain a face structure.
Step 1: Draw a circle to represent the cranium (head)
Step 2: Draw a slightly smaller circle inside the first one
Step 3: Cut the circles in 4 by drawing one horizontal line and one vertical line
The lower right inner corner is for ear placement, the centre line is for the eyebrows, the lower left corner is for eyes and nose.
Step 4: Draw 2 horizontal lines at the start and end of the middle circle
These represent the start of the hairline and jaw
Step 5: Decide on the direction of the face and draw a straight vertical line
This line holds the facial features and represents the front of the face
Step 6: Add a horizontal line at the very bottom, and try to get the 3 parts (P1 to P3) to be equally spaced (some mismatch is okay)
Step 7: Draw a triangle going from the lower line to the 3rd line and then to the centre of P2
This rectangle will carry the nose, mouth, and chin
Step 8: Connect the chin front to the bigger circle and then to the 3rd line
Step 9: Draw the details
Draw the eye inside the lower left small circle
Draw a cylindre for the neck and add the remaining facial features
Step 10: Add the forehead by drawing a small triangle from the middle of P2 and all the way to the middle of P1, then adjust the cranium (bigger circle) to complete the head
And thats’ it! You can adjust the features for more customization
🔶 Structured Side Profile
This is our final structured profile.
🔶 Using 3D models
Thankfully clip studio paint comes with a variety of 3D head models! First import it to your workspace by tapping the model of your choice and it will directly be on your canvas.
You can turn the model around by dragging your cursor or pen to the right or left.
3D models are so versatile, you can easily change the model
Adjust features
And angles
Adjust your model to your liking and hit OK to save the pose.
Lower the opacity of the 3D model layer.
Make sure to create a new layer above the 3D model for the breakdown.
First draw a circle for the cranium following the shape of the head.
It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you can use the circle tool if you want or adjust it using the transform tool.
Duplicate the first circle and transform it top make a smaller version of it just in the middle.
Now draw straight horizontal and add vertical lines, at the very centre of the circles.
Draw a line parallel to the vertical one and extend the vertical line slightly (just for guidance).
Draw horizontal lines at the top and bottom of the smaller circle, those are the guidelines for where the hair (top) and chin (bottom) start.
Now draw a connecting line for the chin starting from the lower part of the big circle and going all the way to the bottom of the parallel line.
Make a cylinder for the neck - I made it slightly longer to make room for other parts.
Now draw a triangle going from the chin and to the middle of the half of the smaller circle.
You can now add features like the nose and mouth inside the triangle in this shape
Now practice without the reference, same steps as earlier
circle ➜ smaller circle ➜ guidelines ➜ neck cylinder ➜ details
🔶 Different Angles
Rotate the crossing lines and you can obtain different angles.
🔶 Tip about eye placement
Drawing the eye and eyebrow too close to the edge of the face or further away gives you different results.
So if you feel something is off with your drawing, try to adjust the eye placement slighlty
🟨 Sketching
Start with some warmup sketches, draw them small and dump your ideas down so when you move to sketching the actual piece you’d have already tried what works and what does not!
Choose a pose and sketch it following the previous methods
🔶 Tip to easily adjust mistakes
When you’re sketching, use the liquify tool to adjust anything that seem badly placed, instead of redrawing.
Liquify is a really strong tool for correcting mistakes, changing proportions and adjusting things.
🔶 Dynamic Hair
If your character does not have a very dynamic pose, you can include dynamic elements, like floating hair
🔶 Props and Design Elements
You can make your character more interesting by adding props and decoration elements, like jewellery, head bands, tattoos and clothes.
Try to sketch out elements you want to incorporate to your drawing before you sketch the actual drawing, just to brainstorm ideas and see if you want to use them later on.
🔶 Final adjustements
Use 3D models to check if your proportions are okay.
Timelapse …
🟨 Lineart
When you’re happy with your sketch, use a mapping pen or rough pen (these are my go to for lineart) and roughly draw the lines.
Lower the opacity of your sketching layer, and create a new layer for the lineart above it.
Increase the stabilization of your pen if you struggle with smooth lines by clicking on the selected brush and moving the slider to the right.
The lines don’t have to be perfect, they can even be sketchy, you can adjust them using the liquify tool.
You can rotate your canvas and zoom in or out for difficult angles.
Even if your lines are sketchy, you can use the eraser to clean them up.
🔶 Color Separation
Separate lineart elements on different layers and different colors, in case you want to adjust anything later on.
Here’s a quick timeplase
🔶 Clean up
To finalize, I like to redraw the lineart in a cleaner way on new layers above the colored lineart folder, and choose a dark color for it
Use this Y shape to add more depth to your lineart, it’s especially useful when your pen is not pressure sensitive like mine.
Some elements may disappear on your lienart as compared to your sketch, or you may want to change some parts, and that’s completely okay!
The hair is one of the parts that took the longest to draw, mainly because I wanted it to flow naturally.
Final Lineart
You can see how different my sketch vs both versions of the lineart are.
🟨 Coloring
🔶 Layers
For coloring, I like to keep each part’s colors on a separate layer
so that if i want to change any color later on I can easily do that
It’s also useful for shading and rendering each part separately without ruining other parts.
🔶 Easier Selection
To select each part separately, I use the selection tool, when working in Simple mode, I just import the selection tool to my brushes and use it (It’s not available in simple mode by default)
You can adjust some of its parameters in simple mode
🔶 Blending Modes
I usually use Multiply blending mode for shadows and alternate between Glow Dodge and Color Dodge for highlights. I also use Overlay to add some hint of color.
For the hair, I used 2 multiply layers, the first one was for the overall base shadows, and the 2nd was to add depth and emphasize where the hair clumps and meets.
🔶 Details
I lightly added some makeup and pink tones to the face to make it pop
🔶 Blending
I use the blend or painterly blender to smudge the colors and give a rendered effect.
🔶 Rendering
At some point when am done with most of the rendering, I lower the lineart’s opacity and add darker edges to the coloring layers, then slightly blend them.
I like the softer look this technique gives.
To finish up, I added a pink overlay layer on top of everything to unify the colors and give it an even softer look
You can see the before and after here, the effect is subtle, but it gives a softer feel (you can increase the opacity for a stronger and richer color)
I finish up by changing the background color to a darker one to make my illustartion pop, since my color choice is a bit light and doesnt work well on white backgrounds (in my eyes :p)
I also add some pink shading set on an overlay layer behind the ilustration to give an ethereal vibe
You can also add some texture using spray brushes or custom stamp brushes to give the background more life!
Check out my custom brush making tutorial to learn how to make your own =D
I used default floral stamps for the background as well as this pretty flower brush
And this is the final piece!
You can watch this video for the timelapse
🟨 Conclusion!
I hope you learned something from this tutorial =)
If you have any questions, please feel free to drop them below!
I’d be happy to chat with you and see your artwork! Let’s connect through the platform or via Instagram/Twitter =D
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