Drawing Faces, Part Three

Logos

Two plane drawings, one ink and one color, have winged across the ocean. You may see them someday in an advertisement. Look for the Big Dipper and North Star on blue above mountains.
Now onward with faces.

Classic or Cute, Proportions

To make an appealing face drawing, it is essential to decide on pleasing proportions. The human face has standard approximate spacing for its features, which one needs to know in order to draw well. While no has a perfectly symmetrical face, which makes each of us a unique individual, we do all recognize when something appears "right." If eyes are noticeably too high, or a mouth too low, it bothers our sense of proportion.

This is what most people draw, but this is what you want to get away from: eyes too high and too close, nose tacked on, ears too low and too small, shapeless mouth, no chin, no bone structure, no brain room - all easily remedied with a few adjustments.

In the diagram below - more precise than the simplified one of a previous post - note these:
*  Pink center line touches the inside corners of the eyes (outsides are higher)
*  Yellow line at the base of the nose is halfway between the eyebrows and chin
*  Orange line at the base of the bottom lip is halfway between the base of the nose and the chin
*  Purple line on the side view marks half of the head and the front of the ear.
*  Green line to yellow is ear size (or a touch smaller), between eyebrows and nostrils

This is the standard face and feature placement - which every artist should practice before trying to adjust it for a more personal "look."

Because we instinctively know that certain placements are right for certain faces and others not, we react to various proportions positively or negatively. By selecting a slight adjustment of placement - not too far out of the "right zone" - an artist can draw out an emotion from the viewer. What we are looking for now is "cute" in a female face.

What makes cute? We know that babies are cute, so we take elements of baby features and juxtapose them with enhanced feminine features.

Baby elements are the big eyes, small chin, unobtrusive nose, and thin neck. The enhanced female features are the emphasized mouth, curved brows and eyelashes, and plenty of hair.

These elements of Cute can be modified endlessly to make different styles. Or the baby elements can be dispensed with and other features enhanced, exaggerated, or diminished to make other styles that are more Decorative than cute.

A few modifications of size and placement result in  lots of different styles of Cute or Decorative..

Now, try it!

Elements of Cute