We learn how to draw faces using circles as our main ingredient in drawing cartoon faces, well there are other cartoon faces that we can create using other shapes as you see below, the boy face has a square shape, the old pilgrim has a diamond face, the lady with a wide lips face has a shape like a number 8 and the French guy has a triangular shape face. The bottom line when drawing cartoons is to make it silly or wacky, as cartoons it supposed to be fun.
For your drawing practice, go outside your house and see people faces, and what is the shape of their face? is it a square…or rectangle?, distinguish it using your imagination, then draw them in your sketchbook, so draw another and another, that would be your reference when you need to draw a cartoon, so you see it is endless, so there is no reason for you not to draw what you see, and this is the skill that you have to cultivate if you want to draw cartoons.
Adding years to the Character
We can turn our character to an aged man or woman, by adding wrinkles to the face, so that means drawing some thin lines below the eyes and forehead as well the face. For a man you may also erase the hair so that the shiny head will be an evident of losing the hair an oldest trick used in the movies.
Cartooning a baby
- Start with the wide circle, add a crosshair.
2. Draw the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth.
3. Add the hair and ears.
4. Erase the crosshair, and we have a baby’s face.
For the rest of the body, I will give a guide for the construction of the baby’s body; we will discuss it later about how to construct the body in the next coming guide.
Drawing Cartoon Eyes
Here are the lists of cartoon eyes you can choose and use when drawing them, also I include the eyebrow.
I’m sure there are many other cartoon eyes you can make, aside from what I provided, again you can go outside your house and try to observe the eyes of the people and imagine the basic shapes behind their eyes, and add it as our reference, so use your imagination.
Drawing Cartoon Mouth or Lips
Mostly cartoon lips are just drawn by a simple thin line for a man (a.), for a woman full lips are used to indicate femininity (b.and c.).
Drawing Cartoon Ear
The cartoon ear is easy to draw; its shape is like a letter C, with lots of Cs as you can see in our example below.
To make your drawings even more dynamic, try experimenting with different facial expressions. Practice sketching happy, sad, surprised, and even angry faces to understand how features change with emotions. Don’t forget to refine your shading techniques to add depth and bring your faces to life. Consistent practice is key!