So you need to draw a face profile... not a problem. With this arcane knowledge that will be shared with you, you should be one step closer to realizing your visions as you wish. This article will cover

-The planes of the face

-Simplification in sketching

-Coloring

-And finally Lighting

Understanding the Basics !

So to begin let us understand the basic shapes of the face- the face seems simple on the surface- but is very complex in terms of angles and surface reflection (also called Ambient Occlusion) when it comes to light, the better imperfections of this surface you can capture- the more believable your drawings will be. Thankfully- when we break the face down into the basic planes we can now re-simplify the structure to understand and capture these small details in our art.

So to start out with- I'm going to show you a quick lighting study I did using the Planes of the Head Method. This is a simplification of the angles and planes on the surface of the face.

-First of all- if you didn't know this already Ctrl + R on your keyboard brings up the Ruler function Clip Studio Paint has to offer. This will be very handy in measuring out the spacing of objects on the face. Using this function- I measured out the bottom of the face and the top of the face- the bottom being around 600px (In the preferences you can change the unit the ruler measures to be mm or pixels- I have mine set to pixels) and the top of the face being 0px.

Why is this important?

Well because the eyes are ACTUALLY always in the MIDDLE of the face- so taking the middle from these two units- we can safely assume the eyes would be around 300px- in this drawing however- the eyes are a little higher up than that- but that's mostly due to my own style since I like prefer drawing longer cheekbones.

Secondly- its time to cover the ears- this is IMPORTANT when drawing profiles- as the ears will tell you WHERE to put your facial structure- OR conversely, the eyes and nose will tell you where to put the ear! Before I go into this tip- I want to make one thing perfectly clear- as the face has much to do with spacing and fractions- taking the units as absolute will always deliver similar-looking faces! The uniqueness in faces comes from the slight differences in the small SPACING between these units. Don't let this confuse you though- until you learn where to put the objects on the face you can continue using absolute measuring.

Now what are those lines from the ear for? Well the bottom of the ear is where the bottom of the nose is- similarly the top of the ear is where the top of the EYE is- although this can range from the top of the eye to the top of the eye bone- depending on how big you want your ears to be.

Finally- before actually going into the sketch of the profile- I want to cover the lighting- that's what the arrows are for- you'll see that the hatched lines are where the shadows are which implies that there's a higher surface covering those areas. The top of the eyes are covered by the BROW BONE. (TIP: Brow bones on masculine faces are more prominent than feminine faces which causes more shadows to hit on the curve between the brow bone and the nose. This shading will also increase the sharpness of the angles of the face- which will make your character more masculine in appearance) The brow bone is another important aspect in drawing profiles! You can see that the edge of the brow bone is what catches a majority of the lighting on the face- so keep this in mind when drawing lighting coming from the top! The arrows bouncing off imply the reflection of the light that's caused by ambient occlusion. But don't worry too much about that right now.

ALRIGHT ENOUGH!! LETS GET INTO IT!

Alright to start off with- I like drawing a 90 degree angle for the front of the face and the chin- this will be the building blocks to build OUTWARD out of for the forms that extend. A slight curve for the jaw bone and then I place the bottom of the ear- trying to keep the top of the ear to the middle of the head (remember for the eye proportions) I have the top of the ear reach the bottom of the brow bone- which also means this is where the indent is going to be. From here I draw the brow bone- which is literally just a triangle going outwards from the line we started off with (TIP: The bottom of the brow bone should be sharper than the top- since it is an immediate curvature and shouldn't be smoothed unless drawing feminine faces- which I will show a demonstration for later). The tip of brow bone should be approximately where the eyebrow goes since the eyebrow sits on top of the brow bone. And the top line of the brow bone should be long and smooth into the curvature at the top of the head since it is a less noticeable curvature!

Then we're going into the nose- since we've already made the building blocks for that with the base of the ear. From the indent of the brow bone I just draw the nose until the bottom of the ear. Which the nostril then sits where the initial line I drew was. Its pretty easy from here- we have the top lip, the bottom lip, the curvature in between the lips and then the chin!

All four of these components should be about equidistant (equal distances) from each other. The top lip has a slightly sharper edge than the bottom lip which has a smoother curve to it. (We'll get into this when we break down the face more). Then you'll want the indent of the chin and lips to be about equal spacing that the lips share- and finally the bottom should be the chin. Don't be afraid to not follow the initial guides we made- as that is what they are- guides. Just to approximately see where we need to place the other objects on the face. The chin does in fact extrude a little bit and doesn't sit flat. If you don't believe me feel the edge of your chin starting from the bottom of your lips!

Finally- just to make the extension from the neck look nicer- you should add a small curve going into the chin- most anime styles don't have this- but if you want characters to look more real- don't be afraid of giving them that extra fat! Real people always have it.

Feminine faces follow a similar principle- but the things you need to change is the sharpness of the brow bone and jaw bone! (I will be rendering a masculine face for the coloring example- but keep in mind that since the brow bone is smaller- more light will hit the curvature between the nose- and the top of the nose! Shadows will also be less intense on the eyes due to less hooding from the top)

To keep the examples consistent- I gave them both big ears, which goes to the brow bone- but if you want a normal-sized ear it should go to the top of the eye. Also to note- The jugular of the neck extends from the curvature of the jawbone and ear! The collarbones should be around the same level as the shoulder. This won't be the case when the shoulders are in a more dynamic position. Just keep this in mind for when you're drawing a flat side profile.

Diving Deeper...

Now I can show you how to do things all day but that won't help you really understand whats happening here- So I will be sketching the insides for you. (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE NOTE- DO NOT SPEND ALL YOUR TIME STUDYING MUSCLES AND BONES- WHILE THEY MAY HELP WITH THE FUNDAMENTAL KNOWLEDGE ITS NOT AS GOOD AS JUST GOING OUT THERE AND DOING IT FROM REGULAR FACE REFERENCES AND LEARNING FROM YOUR MISTAKES FOR THE NEXT FACE YOU DRAW! Unless you're drawing a skinless face- they wont actually help with drawing the skin and subcutaneous fat ontop of them)

The only thing to note is that the top of the teeth sit OVER the bottom which causes the lips to jut out more- if your character has an underbite then the bottom jaw would jut out more- EXCEPT the top of the lip is still pointed due to the fact it has less fat pockets and has gravity bringing it down- the bottom lip is always rounded due to have 3 main fat pockets. Secondly- studying the muscles will help you understand how the face beneath moves for expressions but it doesn't really help due to not telling you where the fat pockets lie- speaking of expressions- let's draw a couple of those so you can see what I'm talking about!

Expressing!

I feel this is a good time to mention the pupil- the pupil is actually receded in the iris- which is receded in the cornea and sclera- which is the clear membrane that covers your eye. Because of this- the pupil is not drawn against the tip of the eye- since the clear part actually extends past the iris.

Here are 3 quick sketches I made to help you understand expressions from the profile view and how the skin folds around the edges based on what is moving on the face. You may notice the most common folds are around the curvature of the bridge of the nose- the nostrils and the cheek fat that sits right beside the nostril. Other typical places are around the lips- particularly by of the cheekbone. Understanding how the muscles flex in these regions CAN help you understand how the skin moves above it- but I personally recommend studying real people's expressions or even looking at yourself in the mirror and studying how your skin moves. But the short explanation I can give you- is to be mindful of the skin around the eyes nose and lips- if you go back to the muscular drawing or look at muscle references you'll see these places have a circular muscular structure which causes the folds when moved.

You can only understand so much from sketches, so let's see how this actually looks when rendered with the light hitting it.

Rendering and such !

Here we have three different skin tones in different lighting with different lighting positions, now you can really see how the skin folds around the different angles of the face. These were drawn with Clip Studio Default brushes- so if I can do it so can you!

Brushes used were:

Gouache

Textured Blender

Wet Bleed Blender

Round Mixing Brush

G-Pen

and Milli Pen

-FACE 1 BREAKDOWN-

For the first face, we have a simple dark skin tone with a front-facing warm light, the shadows are at the back of the skin folds. Remember to capture a more realistic face the lips and eyes have a small amount of reflectivity- which can easily be achieved using a pen brush and dotting the pupil- caruncle (tear ducts) and water lines of the eye. Since the light is coming from the front direction- the bridge will not be hidden in shadow from the brow bone- although slight shading is given to the bridge from the crinkled skin folds!

-FACE 2 BREAKDOWN-

Here we have a light skin tone with neutral shading coming from the top- the small indent has slight shading from the brow bone. More of the neck is hidden from the jawbone casting a shadow on it, but most of the lighting is hitting the top planes of the surface.

-FACE 3 BREAKDOWN-

Lastly, this is a medium darker skin tone lit downwards with a cooler-toned, strong light. The intensity of the light and the darker surrounding lighting leaves much of the skin tone to be hidden. This effect is usually used in environments with intense surrounding atmospheric lighting- since the skin is reflective of the lighting from the atmosphere. What's special about the lighting coming from the bottom, however, is that all the values are swapped. What would be hidden in shadow from top down lighting is now lit and what would normally be lit is now hidden in shadow. Also- since the jaw is pulling down and back, the bottom lip is going to be slightly receded from its resting state.

Extra Lighting and Coloring Tips!

Ambient Occlusion! Which is basically just interpreting how light waves work in nature. Light doesn't just get soaked up by anything unless it's that special black color that consumes 98% of all light. It's always bouncing around even after getting hit by the object. Often times it reflects the object's color back into it. In skin, this is often seen with atmospheric lighting. Dark skin reflects more than light skin, so whatever color is in the atmosphere- the sky around the character or just in the general location like a dark city street with a street light over them- the colors will get reflected back onto the character in the shaded parts that aren't getting directly hit by the light. It has to be exposed to the air though- the less exposed an object is to the air the less the light waves can hit it.

TONAL CORRECTION!!

 

Clip studio offers you the ability to curve your rgb tones to give you a more crisp image- if you don't have a shortcut set up for it- I highly recommend you go into your shortcut settings under file and adding one.

You'll want to move two points around in this general area to get a cleaner look for your drawing- I can't tell you where since that's up to your preferences! Left side controls the dark tones and the right side controls the light tones. Careful though, the dark tones can get adjusted very intensely very quickly, so move it gradually when you're first starting.

Finally the last thing I want to go over is

-Edge control-

This is important as it relates rendering to the first point. To create believable folds in the skin and differential plane light values, make sure you keep at least 1 edge sharp when blending colors together. This isn't for every time you blend colors- although it definitely helps if you're going for a painterly style- if you want smoother shading then smooth all 4 sides of the stroke.

For this, I find the gouache pen to work wonderfully. Both sides of the bottom drawing are smoothed out although you can still see a sharp edge at the bottom- but we're focusing on the sides for this example. The top example has a sharp edge on one side and the rest is blended- creating a sharp and understandable difference in lighting and tones.

If you're unsure of what the words, value, and tone are- they pretty much mean the same thing. The tone is the lightness or darkness of a color or shade- a shade is just greyscale- the absence of color. Which leads to value- which is also just how dark or light the colors and shades are- see? Tone can also mean the mood of a drawing- which means which colors you are using to portray the "feeling" of a drawing, such as red for intensity, or blue for a melancholy tone. This goes into color theory, but this article will not be focusing on the complexities of color theory.

How does the simplification of the face and drawing the face relate?

As we can see the tones of the colors are directly related to the simplified version of the face we covered in the first part. The angles that were covered in darkness in the top-down lighting are now lit in the third drawing. These planes will tell you exactly how to light the face from the side and will help you visualize how the face sticks out towards you when coloring the side even though technically it is just flat. Blocking out your lights and shadows according to these planes will be your guide to coloring the sides of the face. This now relates to the edge control that was covered in the previous topic. Following the edges of this and creasing your colors where the edges lie will make your faces look more dynamic.

Angles

As we can see- as long as we follow the guidelines placed by the ear- we can very reliably place the features of the rest of the face no matter what angle it is. Also, keep in mind the piece of skin that connects the jaw to the neck, it stretches when looking up and folds when looking down.

To cover a couple more angles- let's go over when the face is slightly tilted. Take note of how the guidelines from the ear to the eye and nose actually bend upwards- when looking up, the ear is at a lower angle and when looking down the ear is at a higher angle, which also causes the guidelines to bend downwards. And finally, when drawing a slight angle to the side profile- remember to show the eyelashes on the other side of the nose. More angle to the side of the face cause the cheekbone and mouth fat to show which causes a slight bump on the lines of the side of the face since the mouth extrudes from the cheek starting at the bottom of the nostrils.

To wrap up!

I hope you learned a couple of things that will help you progress on your journey! To recap, we learned how to simplify the face and relearn it in a way that's easily understandable. Using these methods of breaking down the face we can now apply it to creating a realistic profile of the face. As well as a couple of coloring and lighting tips that will help you understand how lighting affects these planes more to be able to make your profiles look more lively and 3 dimensional. Good luck out there and don't ever get discouraged from creating. You can do it.