P4CK 0F N00DL3S

Hi! I saw your tutorial on side heads... have you done one for frontal views? If not, could you if you aren't busy? Thanks!

Ok so I whipped this up for ya.

SIDE NOTE: during this tutorial it is vital to keep flipping the canvas horizontally to check for lines that aren’t even or centred. Trust me flipping is important. 

Just like the Side Head / Profile tutorial we’re going to start with a circle, doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect this part is just the guidelines. One the circle we’re going to draw a cross. I usually have the cross match up with roughly the centre of the circle. The horizontal line will become the guide for placing the eyebrows.

I’m doing this digitally so I turned down the opacity of the guidelines and made a new layer on the top of it. I start drawing the face shape from the horizontal guideline downwards, gradually bringing the line a little inwards. We can then softly curve the lines inwards to form the jaw and then only slightly back outwards and under to make the chin. If you draw one side of the face you can copy, paste it then flip it and line it up to make the other side but I often find drawing it in gives a better result. You can play around with your line length and shape to change your jaw shape if you wish.The bottom of the face falls so that the bottom of your guideline circle hits roughly halfway between your horizontal guide and the chin. This pretty much just splits the face into thirds.

Here I’ve added the ears which fall pretty much halfway up the face. I’ve also added the neck and flared out the end of the lines to give the impression it’s connected to the body. You can choose how wide you would like the neck to be but typically female characters have thinner necks while male characters have thicker ones. I have drawn mine thinner so this character example will be female. Neck length from where it joins the jaw line is the same length as one of the guide thirds.

The nose is placed just under the bottom of the circle guide. Since this is from the front we don’t need to draw in the bridge of the nose, only the nostrils. Draw two small bracket shapes on each side of the centre line then a small horizontal curve inwards on the bottom of each bracket. Be careful not to let the two nostrils touch at the bottom. Also the bracket shapes can be manipulated to create the impression of different nose shapes by making them more angular or larger or further apart.The mouth is a little higher than halfway between the bottom of the nose and the chin. The sides of the mouth are placed horizontally halfway in between the neck lines and the sides of the nose. The sides of the mouth can also lines up directly with the pupils of the eyes but in this case I have drawn the bottom half of the facial features first. I’ve also quickly marked in a hair line back on the guidelines layer.

We place the eyebrows along the horizontal guideline. You can make the eyebrows as thick as you want or as short or long as you want so long as they’re in roughly the right position. Below the eyebrows we draw in the top line of lashes starting almost in line with the beginning of the eyebrows and curving up and round in a semi circle shape, it does not matter if it’s a perfect semi circle so long as it’s curved. You can alter this line to achieve different eye shapes eg. instead of curving the line downwards you can make it trail off almost horizontally to get almond shaped eyes or you can curve the line downwards dramatically to make eyes look droopy. I this example I have drawn in the fold on the top of the eyelid but this is not necessary if your character has a mono lid. I tend to draw the bottom lash line quite horizontally but again you can alter it’s angle to give different eye shapes. At this point I avoid drawing in the iris until I have drawn the dreaded other eye. This is so that If I’m desperate I can copy paste the eye and flip it with out having to erase the iris and redraw it. 

Time for hair! When drawing hair if your character has bangs or a side fringe or any hair that falls in front of the face draw this first. I want to give my character a bob cut so I have given her a simple set of bangs. 

Draw in the back mass of hair. If the character has relatively flat bangs I will draw the back of the haircut a little higher than the top of the bangs but if the characters fringe is styled up this is not necessary. You can erase the ears here if you would like the characters hair to cover them.Get rid of the guidelines layer and there you go, one front view.

I hope this will help you! If you would like a more in depth tutorial on anything covered here like hair or eyes feel free to drop me a message!