I’ve found that drawing the head starts to make a lot more sense once you start thinking about cheekbones and cheeks, and how the fit into the head structure.
You might be aware of the Mysterious Indent that Looks Good Next to the Outer Part of the Eye, or the Mystery Indent for short.
Drawing a Mystery Indent may serve you fine if you only draw the head from flat angles, but it falls apart when you get adventurous.
Why isn’t this making sense anymore?
Drawing a ‘Mystery Indent’ is an attempt to imply cheekbones without knowing how they actually incorporate into the skull, and this is why it looks so unconvincing when you use it to draw the head in anything other than ¾ view.
The cheekbones wrap around the head and eye sockets from above the bridge of the nose. The concave you draw if you draw the ‘Mystery Indent’ is a misunderstanding. There is no concave. You should instead be thinking of this as where the eye socket/brow overlaps the (convex!) cheekbone.
Compare the cheekbones on both sides for placement. They should match up and correspond with each other.
(Knowing cheekbone structure helps when drawing gaunt characters, because their cheekbones may stick out. Remember to compare the cheekbone placement on both sides!)
* This is part of a much larger tutorial I’m working on about head, face, and facial feature structure. Hopefully more to come eventually?
So you might be saying: Lion why a guide on drawing black people? Well young blood it’s because a lot of people cant…seem…to draw…black people..Amazing I know.
Racist (caricatures) portrayals of black people have been around forever, and to this day people can’t seem to draw black people like they are human. If your artwork resembles any of the above even remotely your artwork is racist and offensive. If you try to excuse that as a stylistic choice you’re not only a terrible artist, but racist too!!! Congrats.
Whitewashing is also a problem. A lot of people refuse to draw black features on canonly black characters. While this example isn’t colored, lightening the skin-tone of a character is also considered whitewashing. So lets start with features!
Now all black people have different noses thats a no-brainer, but black noses tend to have flatter bridges, and wider nostrils.
Please stay from triangular anime noses and small button noses.
Your drawings should not depict black people with abnormally large noses. (Especially if you do not draw other characters this way)
If you feel like the way you draw lips on black characters is offensive or resembles a caricature,it probably does and you should change it. ABSOLUTELY AVOID PLACING LIPS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FACE.
Hair is so diverse! Please get used to drawing braids, locs,kinks and coils! If you can learn to draw ringlets and long waves you can learn how to draw black hairstyles.
Add clips! Learn how to draw baby-hairs and never be afraid to add color Pinterest and Google are free my dudes! Also try using square brushes for blocking in coils.
A compilation of stuff I know about drawing Asian faces and Asian culture! I feel like many “How-To-Draw” tutorials often default to European faces and are not really helpful when drawing people of other races. So I thought I’d put this together in case anyone is interested! Feel free to share this guide and shoot me questions if you have any! I’m by no means an expert, I just know a few things from drawing experience and from my own cultural background.
Aliquid de Magis 