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Apr 2021

Do you also find drawing a symmetrical face very hard?

It might look OK on canvas, but once I flip the drawing horizontally, the face is always asymmetric ...

Any tips on fixing this issue?

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    Apr '21
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    Jan '23
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Construction lines may help (if you don't use them). You can also use the circle tool to create an ellipse or circle, lower the opacity of that layer, and then use the circle/ellipse as a base for the illustration.

I sort of have this problem too, but I try not to let it bother me too much (unless it's really bad). Cartoonist's license!

I got one: faces don't have to be symmetrical. =/

I mean, obviously, your characters shouldn't look like Picasso paintings or anything (unless that's what you're going for) but a little unevenness is totally forgivable, if not natural. Most photos of real people that I've seen aren't totally symmetrical either, even around the eyes.

Although, if you're a digital artist...couldn't you solve this by simply mirroring half the face in the sketch? Like, draw a face normally, then pick the best half and copy+paste.

Well, I'll preface this by saying faces are asymmetrical, so if it is just a little different, you should be fine.

With that out of the way, you wouldn't have been bothered by a little asymmetry in your drawing, so I susprect that when flipped it looked messed up. Honestly, I have that problem quite often, and to me, it's trial and error until a kinda "build" a face that looks ok when flipped. You could try to copy and flip the eye if the angle allows it (it's usualy the eyes that mess the face up the most), but that's not always possible.

My advice is to flip the drawing constantly while you are drawing it. Don't draw the whole face and only then flip it, if you're insecure. Flip it as many times as you need during the process, so you can see what makes the face asymmetrical and fix it as soon as possible.

I draw it, flip it, fix the flipped version using a mixture of transform tools and drawing over, then I flip it back again. I don't draw perfectly symmetrical faces because it tends to look a bit mechanical, but if I do want something to be 100% symmetrical, Photoshop actually has a useful "mirror" tool for doing exactly that. You can also do things like if you draw one eye and want the other to match, just copy, paste and then transform-flip horisontal.
Over time, you can train yourself to account for the way you tend to skew while drawing, so your flips will be less painful and need less fixing.

It becomes better with time. I usually don't care because it's not that bad and I rarely draw just a character looking straight at the camera, but when I need an especially good face for a cover or something, just as @darthmongoose I draw it, flip it, change it a bit (redrawing/transforming one part of the jaw, relocating one eye) and that's it. It doesn't have to be perfectly symmetric, because people are not.
Symmetry tool is a cool thing, but when I notice in the comics that artist uses it, it frequently has the uncanny valley effect. Also not the best thing if you're trying to learn how to draw anyway.

Okay, well I have this problem where everything I draw is skewed to the left (I'm left handed). This is easy to fix drawing digitally, but I found some ways to minimize the problem:

  • I make sure that my paper/tablet is centered under my eyes, or even farther to the right.
  • I also purposely draw the right side of faces taller than I think they need to be.
  • I use construction lines to get features the same size.
  • I use construction lines to make sure features are placed at the right height.

If your problem is not related to skewing, another exercise is to practice copying a face upside down, then turn it right side up to see if you just need more practice copying accurately. Hope this helpful.

I don’t claim to draw perfectly symmetrical faces, but my trick for eyes/eyelashes is to look at eye 1 while lightly drawing eye 2 (just looking at eye 2 with peripheral vision) and then darkening it afterwards. I also use the lasso tool to move stuff around in sketches until it looks right haha :slight_smile:

To be honest if I really have to draw a front view of a face I just use the mirror tool for a very very basic sketch to map out where all the features go and then freehand the refined sketch and inking because I don't like the uncanny valley android-like look of perfectly symmetrical faces. I know that's not how I "should" be doing it and I'm sure there are art purists out there who would think I'm not a real artist because of it but it saves time and I'm hopefully still building up my visual and muscle memory. It also helps me focus on deliberate asymmetry more so yeah. I don't mind doing it that way.

I can't draw symmetrical face, but that's okay. Irl faces aren't really symmetrical. xD

(Or at least that's what I keep telling myself to not feel bad about it.)

1 year later

Doing this excercise is really helpful. Trace the construction over the head, then try to eyeball it.
You will get better at this and you will also be surprised that all heads are symetrical even though
the face maybe doesn´t look symetrical. When I look at my own face it doesn´t look symetrical,
the skull does though

It happens to me a lot of the times, especially while drawing in traditional. I think for me it's a bit related to my sight (I see less from the left eye than the other) and faces are always a bit deformed on the left side. One trick I started to use is to sketch the construction lines, I draw the left part before and then the right one (I'm right handed, if I do the contrary I cover the face ending up into an endless correction between the two sides).

When I'm drawing on clip studio paint I use the same method as @darthmongoose, I flip the face, transform it or adjusting, flip back and see if it works.