Tutorial – Female face front view

So! Let’s start the work now! For the first step, let’s draw the very basic : front-view face, today a female

First, start with a circle. Then add in the lower part of the circle some diagonal lines for the cheeks and end them in a curvy line for the chin. I have added some guidelines for the position of face features. Usually a face is 4 eyes width, and the distance between the eyes is one eye width.

Add the eyes. Keep in mind that the eyes are the key feature in manga faces, so start with these. Add at least two highlights and black big pupils. Position the nose, ears and mouth.

Add the hair, and keep in mind to add it at the exterior of the head. We don’t want it to look like glues to the forehead

Now that we have all the features, we can start inking. As my personal technique, after I have the basic drawing in pencil I add ink the main lines and then when the ink is dry I remove the pencil. But you may find more convenient to trace your drawing one more time if you don’t want to use eraser on main drawing

After I have a clear drawing, with guidelines removed and some solid ink added, I start adding details in ink and play with the lines. Same type of lines make the drawing look flattened, so I add more ink in order to make some more evident.

The next step would be either adding soft details like shadows to reflect the shapes of the faces, or coloring. Here I preferred to keep the drawing in ink and pencil, so I added the shades in pencil. Keep in mind to set a direction for the light and that the shadows follow the shapes. In this example, light is in the right side of the screen, so the shades on face follow this fact. In the right stronger shades from the hair, and in left side stong shade on the neck from the chin. And here it is the final version :

Hope this will help you  :) Next time, I will explain how to draw the profile of the same character Cheers !