Portrait Drawing Design Tips from Chris Legaspi

Now it's time to try things out for yourself! 

Here are a few exercises to help you train your eye and practice designing heads. 

Head Type Warm-ups

Experiment by sketching some simple head shapes. Exaggerate and play with them, and try out different shapes to get yourself warmed up for further drawing.

Shape and Silhouette

The silhouette is the most important foundation of our drawing, so it's important to train your eye to recognize the contours of your subject! Using a photo as reference, identify the shapes and contours of your figure. Don't worry about details at this stage. I'd recommend making these small, so you can keep them as a reference.

Poster Vision

In this exercise, we'll focus a little more on paying attention to the details of the face. Identify light and dark shapes like the shadows under the brow, eyebrow, and nose. Focus on training your eye to catch on to these recognizable details.