Month: June 2025

This card is from Barton’s How to Draw Your RPG Character.

This lesson is about going through example faces in the book. Chrissa has many examples of humans, elves, dwarves and others, both male and female, from different angles. This lesson is about pulling in what I’ve been practicing and try to complete a good face based on an example. Later I can expand this exercise to include my own references or draw from imagination. I still need to practice facial details. I had a hard time drawing the ear and mouth. But, I’m very happy with my progress so far. I am not drawing hair yet. I want to get better at the ear and mouth first. After my practice, I pulled in Chrissa’s example and did a draw over to see where I had issues. I think looking at photo references might help here too since I don’t have good reference built up in my mind yet. I have been looking at people in real life and in movies and I’m surprised by the proportions and details and how variable they are. Learning to draw faces is making me look at people much more closely now and appreciate how we are all constructed! 🙂

Next time I will do another character from the book, probably a male character for practice.

Photoshop using Huion tablet.

I did 30 minutes practice and then 30 minutes to complete this image.

This card is from Barton’s Draw Your RPG Character.

This lesson is an intro to other facial features – nose, lips, ears. It’s not in depth, just some examples. I think I would like to find more videos on how to draw these features, Chrissa had a video on eyes, I’ll see if she also has videos for the other features. I followed along with the examples and feel like they are ok. Again, some things clicked more when I looked at reference photos instead of drawn examples. I just need more practice!

Next time I will work on whole faces to get practice on all skills.

Photoshop using Huion tablet.

I did about 60 minutes of practice on this lesson.

This card is from Chrissa Barton’s Draw your RPG Character.

This lesson is about drawing basic eyes and eyebrows. It’s just a start from the front only, but we get into more later. It’s a good overview with different shapes to try different looks for your characters. There’s not a lot of detail in this, just one page with examples, but it’s enough to get started. I also saw a video lesson by Chrissabug that helped as well. I might add that later as a more advanced lesson.

Next time I will try using some copying and flipping to try to get things more symmetrical. It’s really difficult. Now, people in real life aren’t exactly symmetrical, but I also don’t want things to look too off. So having some guidelines for size and shape might be helpful.

Photoshop using Huion tablet.

I did about 60 minutes of practice on this lesson.

This card is from Barton’s Draw Your RPG Character.

This lesson is about how to draw a basic head. I am starting to add in some features to some of my heads, even though I haven’t reviewed the feature sections yet. But I feel like adding the features is helping me to see the shapes better. Since I’m at the point where I really want to dig into features, I’ll go ahead and continue with different lessons. I did this lesson twice in a row, and I still have a lot to learn, but I think I’m ok moving on. I found that I have an easier time using this simple model but drawing from reference photos of people is giving me the best turnout. Otherwise my drawing is just too generic and it’s also out of proportion. So I’ll continue to work from photos since it’s helping.

Next time I will work from some reference photos, so I can pull some photos for reference in my spare time. I want to try to find more face shapes in real life so I can get that practice in.

Photoshop using Huion tablet.

These are drawings from my 60 minutes of practice.

This card is from Chrissa Barton’s How to Draw Your RPG Character.

Whew! It’s been a few weeks since I posted a new lesson. I hit the obstacle of drawing heads and faces, and kind of had to try out several different books, videos and tutorials to try to find something that resonated with me. I’m not trying for realistic portraiture, I’m trying to find something that is fairly easy and gets me to a semi-cartoony style. Chrissa’s book is very close to what I am looking for, so I’ll make that one of my tracts that I’m learning. SVS also gets into faces, but more from a style perspective. I needed help just getting started. This is the form of the basic head shape and basic layout, then there will be lessons on features and style. But I’m able to see things better and I’ll be able to continue from here. It’s a good start. I’ll need lots of practice. I’ve never really tried drawing people before, so it’s all new to me.

Next time I will do some sketching on paper too. I think it will be good to try on paper, procreate and photoshop and see which one I like best. The basic shape is coming out well, I need to work better on eye measurements to get a balanced face. I also need to work on symmetry, it’s hard to draw features the same in both directions.

Photoshop using Huion tablet.

I did about 60 minutes practice.