Making faces

Introduction:

You can make the face in the same way as the body: making a sketch first, trace it, then shade it. This works best for larger bases.

When you resize your sketch to a really small size, though, it becomes really blurry and hard to see. In that case, it's better to draw the face from scratch. In this chapter, I will show you how.

Step 1:

Pick a really dark color other than black. I used a really dark brown. About halfway the head, draw two small curved lines for the upper eyelashes. Make sure the space between them is as wide as the eye itself.

Draw the lower eyelash, or just shade it in if you want it to be subtle. Then, you can fill in the white of the eye.

Now, pick a color for the iris. I used dark brown. Draw a small circle in the middle of the eye for the iris, but leave one pixel white for the highlight. Also, have the iris touch at least one of the eyelashes. If you leave white space all around the iris, your doll will look very wide-eyed and freaked out.

If you have room for it, draw in a black pupil in the center of the iris. I didn't, so I left it out.

You can give the eyelashes a more dramatic shape now. After that, add some eyeshadow all around it to blend them in.

Also, add a bit of shading to the iris. If it's really small like mine, it doesn't need much. If it's larger, you'll need to pay more attention to this. Keep in mind where the light source is!

Step 2:

If you've finished the eyes, draw two curved lines for the eyebrows. For this, you can use the color that you blended the eyelashes with.

Then, use the darker shades from your skin palette to blend in the eyebrows.

Step 3:

Start adding dark shading around the eyes and to the sides of the head. If you have room for it, you can use a dark line to indicate the eyelid. This face is too small for it, though.

Then, add a highlight on the forehead. Keep in mind where the light source is! Don't make it symmetrical.

Step 4:

The top half of the face is finished. Now it's time to add the nose. Start by drawing a small shadow where you want the nose to end.

After that, put a strong highlight on the tip of the nose. Put darker shades on either side of the nose, but put more and darker shading on the shadow side of the nose! Again, keep the light source in mind.

You can add some shading the sides of the cheeks, the ears and the chin now. Don't put a lot of dark shading along the jawline, though, or your doll will seem to have a beard.

Put some subtle highlights on the cheeks right below the eyes. We'll work more on it later, after we put the mouth in.

Step 5:

Pick a nice color for the lips. I chose an orangy-red.

Draw the shape of the lips as a solid block of color, but leave one pixel on the lower lip for the highlight. The highlight should be on the same side as the light source. After that, use a darker version of your lip color to draw the line between the lips. Now, blend in the highlight on the lower lip. Lastly, blend in the lips with the surrounding skin.

When you've finished the lips, you can add some more shading around the mouth and add some more highlights on the cheeks. Keep tweaking the face until you're happy with it.

End result:

If you've worked through the tutorial this far, you now have a finished base with a face! Congratulations!

Now, off to doll with it!