- [Josh] Hey, guys, this is ErgoJosh
and welcome to my YouTube channel.
Today I'm gonna give you guys a special tip
on how to draw faces correctly almost every single time.
But before I do that, I wanna show you guys
a little bit of proof of how other artists
and companies use the same kind of technique
to get their characters looking not only attractive
or cute, but to keep them consistent
every single time they're drawn.
For example, with this portrait that I drew,
if I go back into the time lapse replay,
you can see I start off with a basic shape
right about here, and then at the end, I finish it up.
So who am I talking about?
Well, one company in particular is Disney.
So with Disney, I wanted to look at Elsa from Frozen.
You can tell that the character is very iconic.
You know, everyone is visually attracted
to almost every single one of Disney's characters.
I mean, who doesn't?
That's why they're so popular.
But something that I've noticed
is that the way they structure their anatomy
and their face, in particular, is very pleasing to the eye.
I'm just gonna do a quick trace over
to show you guys exactly what I mean.
So let me reduce the opacity of these two.
So I'm just gonna do a quick trace over of
their facial anatomy and focus on the shapes.
So you can see here that it's very different
from, you know, a normal human anatomy.
Everything's kind of squashed down.
It's very similar to like a baby's facial structure.
Getting into it here.
And then just gonna do a basic outline for the eye.
Just wanted this to be very quick.
Basic diagram for the nose.
Then for the mouth.
I'll go into the other one.
Now some of you may be thinking, like,
oh, I can, like, maybe impressed
by how I'm tracing their faces,
but this is just because I've studied
a lot of faces and I know
quite a bit of face shapes already.
So don't get discouraged,
because after you watch this video,
you'll have the tools that you need
to be able to kind of identify these shapes,
not only with other artistic content that you like,
but in every day pictures and people
that you see in your walking life.
Okay, so I'm gonna get the rest of this nose down.
I think I'm going to add a little bit
of a line for the lower lip.
I just wanna keep this very diagrammatic.
And then, I think we're good.
So as you can see, I've drawn the basic outline.
And I don't know, but if you're like me,
I can still tell, like, with these extremely few
basic lines, I can still tell
that these are really cute attractive girls,
and I don't need any details to know that.
I can just tell.
And this one more, in particular,
because it's at an angle, but here as well,
you can just tell, like, I know a lot of you,
if you could draw something like this,
you would be really happy.
And you can.
I mean, this is basically an egg shape.
You've got a triangle here for the nose.
You've got an arc here for the lips
with two smaller arcs aligned,
and then another almond shape.
And the thing is, if you can draw these shapes,
then you can fill in the rest of the details.
And what most people do is they will get distracted
and start with the eye, and start with the other eye,
not be able to draw the other eye.
Or they'll start with the nose, and it just doesn't work.
Now, why are these two shapes in particular
very interesting, why do we like them?
Well, I think it's because Disney knows the power of cats.
So, cats.
Basically, the anatomy of Elsa and many other characters
that Disney has created,
they share similar anatomy cues that cats have.
And you know, we all like cats, right?
Some would argue that the Internet is for cats,
cat videos, in particular.
The way they're face is structured is basically,
if you take a circle, and use that to represent a face,
and cut it in half, a cat's face is basically
the eyes above the circle, above the halfway line,
and then the nose and the mouth below it.
And that's basically it.
But if you look at it in profile,
like I'm about to show you here...
I'm not exactly sure if that's
the skull shape for a cat's head.
I feel like it isn't, but I think we'll still
get the message across.
As you can see here,
just getting the basic shape of the cat in,
it's pretty much, it's very simple.
But in profile, there's also this thing
where the nose and the mouth are in
this little chunk that extends from the face.
And so the face is elongated because, you know,
it's a cat, it's not a human being,
but basically, you've got half the face
all dedicated to the eye and the forehead,
and then the rest dedicated to the mouth and the nose.
If we look at it in head on view,
it's pretty much the same thing.
Working here...
And then if I try to estimate, like,
if I were to try to represent a cat's smushy face
into like one shape,
it's really tricky to do.
It's more evident, the proportions that I'm talking about.
So this really does look like half,
and you can see, like,
everything is dedicated to the eyes above the halfway line,
and then below, you've got this little chunk
that's just the nose and the mouth.
So if we go back to the Elsa drawings,
you can see it's basically the same thing.
Let me draw on the right layer.
You can see it's basically the same thing.
It's like, you draw a halfway line,
you've got the nose and the mouth
and this little protruding little chunk here,
and then the eyes, and so we're used to that.
We think that kind of look is really cute and attractive.
See it here, she's got this really elongated
little chunk of a face.
I keep using that word.
Just for her nose, her mouth, and her chin,
and then the rest of her face upwards
is for her eyes and their forehead.
And let me turn them back on.
It makes a very cute, very youthful,
attractive expression, and I think, I don't know
who exactly designed all of Disney's characters,
but I think they really took cues from cats,
because we all know cats, we all love cats,
and it really helps us identify with these characters.
And it conveys the innocence and the interactiveness
of a very cute person,
and it gets people coming to the shows,
it gets people buying the toys, you know?
It works.
So am I saying that you need to copy the shape
to get all of your drawings to look good?
No, but what I'm saying is that
instead of focusing on trying to drawn an eye
and guess where the nose is,
focus on learning how to see shapes,
how to look at an oval and bend it properly,
how to bisect it, you know.
If I go back on here, you can see this is a
kind of a egg shape that's turned in 3D space,
and you can cut it in half,
you can draw a halfway line,
you can draw the lines for the planes of the face,
and you're getting into a lot of facial
anatomy details here, but still, if you focus
on like these basic shapes, and even if I were
to erase the eyes, you know, and focus
on the kind of diagrams that I just drew.
Let me hide Elsa.
Right, so if you focus mostly on
just those anatomical shapes,
I can tell that this is still
going to be a successful drawing.
So before you even draw any details,
you should be drawing things like this,
and then, once you get used to it,
and I'm sure some of you even know,
as you're watching this video,
you can visualize where those eyes are gonna be.
You can visualize where that nose is gonna be.
And you'd be really confident,
and drawing the other eye wouldn't even be hard.
You wouldn't even feel like you need
to look at so much reference,
you would just get a feel for it,
and guess like, okay, there's this kind of soft
continual rhythm here that flows into the nose.
There's a mouth that kind of stays within this line.
And I'm drawing a face that's different from Elsa
originally, but it still works,
because it's just something that makes sense
because it follows the shape rhythm.
And if you can learn to see this,
then every single drawing you do
is going to be successful,
because you'll, instead of thinking,
oh, this eye isn't right, this mouth is in the wrong place,
I need to shift it, you'll be thinking,
oh, this character looks a little bit older than I wanted.
Let me make her look a little bit younger.
Oh, this character looks a little bit too masculine.
Let me make it more feminine
by doing this thing that I know
makes characters look more feminine
because of basic, you know,
something you can read in a book.
For example, like, the jaws, they're much less pronounced.
So I make it rounder to make the character
look more feminine.
And you start to really be creative,
and you start to be developing things
that people find interesting rather than just copies
of things that we see in reality.
And then that's where you really start to see
your style begin to come out,
and really amazing things begin to happen,
and you start feeling like, you know,
you're making art, and it's fun,
and yeah, that's what it's all about.
So don't focus so much on the details,
but focus more on the shapes,
and learning to see that, getting an eye for things.
But the question you guys might be having now
is well, how do I do that, Josh?
How do I learn to see these shapes?
And I'll give you a little tip on how to do that,
but before I give it to you,
keep an open mind, this is kind of a taboo thing.
I know a lot of people think that what I'm about to tell you
is wrong, but it really isn't
as long as you do it and you're understanding
that you're doing it to learn.
Actually, scrap what I just said.
I'm gonna include that in another video.
I got into a little bit, and I realized,
it was way too big of a topic to try to smush into this one.
So what I'm actually going to do,
is I'm going to show you a little bit more in depth
of how I did it in this portrait here.
So if we go back into the time lapse replay,
you can see I started off with a circle.
And I just do that to, you know,
it's simple, it's easy, gets you in the mood for drawing,
and having something on the paper is always just a really
great way to start to add more things.
Starting from a detail is very difficult,
and you'll see usually only very
experienced artists do that.
But then, yeah, after I move past the circle,
I add into this V-shape, and this kind of round shape
for the cranium, and I've gotten very used
to getting that gesture, getting that stroke right,
and that's why you can see it's pretty much
perfectly done, even though it's only one or two lines.
And then I go in and then I start shaping the jaw,
and I know that I'm having this head that's looking down,
so I draw the shape of this head.
I'm cutting out where the plain of the head,
at the forehead stops, and recognizing
that it's this M-shape.
Then I cut down, and I focus on this V-shape.
And so immediately I know where the mouth is
and where the nose is without having to struggle,
because once I've got these basic shapes down,
and I think you guys, too, looking at this part right here,
you can already get a feel for where
everything is going to be.
And the more experienced you are,
the more details you can see before you actually draw.
So as you can see, I continue to add more details.
I draw these lines, you know,
they kind of look like Spiderman,
but it helps give my mind a little bit more hints
about where I should put these eyes.
I'm not comparing the distance between any points yet,
I'm just trying to build it up for myself,
even though I am using a reference to draw this.
And so there I get the eyes done.
And I shift them a tiny little bit,
but if you notice throughout the rest of the drawing,
I don't really change them, the position very much,
and I just continue to add detail.
And as we move forward, you know,
I'm now focusing on the hair.
I'm thinking about the composition,
and the face is already done pretty much.
I don't fiddle with the face.
I don't struggle with it.
And trust me, guys, I've spent way too much time
struggling with the faces before,
but here it was done and it was quick,
because I focused on the shape,
and I allowed that to inform my decisions moving forward.
And here I am, finishing up the final portrait.
But I'm actually not finishing it up,
I'm just adding a few more details
before I convert it to something that's black and white,
and then I will continue to work on it from there
to make it a final portrait before my editing phase.
But if you enjoyed this video,
please feel free to subscribe.
I make videos at least once a week,
and I will definitely follow up with the promise
I made earlier in the video
to show you guys how to quickly learn how to see shapes.
It's something that I have done very successfully,
that has been very helpful to me,
and has completely transformed my artwork, in my opinion.
So please stay tuned for that.
It's just, I would've loved to include it
in this video, but it's just,
it would've gotten too long, and I feel like,
I really want people to understand it,
and I feel like it would be best
to have a completely dedicated video for that topic.
So thank you guys so much for watching,
and I will see you in the next video.
Peace.