Tips on how to draw realistic faces pls

[jisungslino]

[FritzC]

How realistic do you mean? Like, photo realistic or just over stylized cartoony?

[oliveoly]

The answer is practice, try to look at a lot of random people and try to imitate what you see/trace from the pictures. If you don't want to trace over the face or real people, you can also mess around with artbreeder to get the kind of face you want to draw then copy off of it
that's how I'm practicing right now

[FritzC]

Did this help?

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I think the best tip I would give is not to use solid lines.

A lot of people who are starting out with realistic drawings (after having come from a cartoon-only background, I assume) are used to drawing facial features with solid shapes and lines, so they continue...and quickly fall into the uncanny valley.

In realism, a solid, unbroken line means 'corner', 'edge', or at least 'tight fold'. And the typical face doesn't have that many of those...you have to learn to leave lots of empty space and use smaller lines in tandem to describe subtle facial features (fortunately, if you're an anime artist, you usually learn that pretty early on ^^).
Here's an example of what I mean:

The left example looks much more lifelike and friendly, don't you think? This is an easy way to make even your beginner sketches look 5x nicer.

[snowy]

[jcmraz]

Practice drawing from life. That's really it. Go to reddit gets drawn and draw a face every day. Think about the structure when you draw. Look over it afterward to see how close you got. Ask someone else to critique it and give pointers.

[LCT_m_a_d]

Focusing on proportions was what lead to my prior success as a portrait artist.
One of the major differences between realism, semi realism, and caricature lies within the variants of certain facial features in relation to each other. for example considering the size of eye (specifically in relation to the nose)

The more those relationships are emphasized, the more cartoony your impressions will appear.
So in contrast, the mores subtle these variants are (provided they are consistent) the more realistic of an impression you will get.

Since proportions tend to require a lot of adjustments, many self-taught artists tend to over-look this fundamental principal of design. With that said... if you happen to have strong grasp of proportion drawing, it may be worth considering inconsistent rendering of the mouth and nose in relation to the eye which is another common occurrence. Noses tend to be drawn with fewer shapes defined and mouths having too many rendering lines.

The reoccuring theme usually comes down to an overwhelming contrast in how facial features are presented in relationship to each other.

[CytricAcid]

Drawing from life only gets you so far without pointers. That's the obvious answer, and tbh, the lazy answer. We all develop our own intuition and tips on how to draw faces and it's disingenuous to just imply every beginner needs to reinvent the wheel when we can all pool our little tips and tricks together to make it easier to learn. You can study for hours, but without a perspective shift or an epiphany, you'll never get anywhere. We should be sharing our epiphanies.

Pay attention to proportions of facial features. Compare faces to others and see the differences between them. This helps you pinpoint what makes a face unique.
Keep in mind the 3d structure of a face. If you look up "human face planes" on google you'll get something like this. Understanding the 3d structure of a face goes a long way in being able to portray faces and facial features at any angle.

Don't be afraid to trace faces and break them down into planes like the above drawing. Tracing is a good way to develop proper muscle memory.

[feuersichel]

I can recomend Proko, if you wanna go for realism: https://m.youtube.com/user/ProkoTV

For practicing, the website quickposes helped me alot. Especially for studying the flow of a figure. https://quickposes.com/en

[feuersichel]

This!
Drawing from life is fine and good. But without the understanding of "why" and "how" something works, it can only help to a certain point. I like the saying: first learn the rules, then you can breake the rules

[NickRowler]

Be aware of facial proportions. You can start by getting photos of people and drawing straight lines to see how things line up. Not everyone will have a perfectly proportions face but most people are similar enough that knowing the basics will make it easier.

If you are drawing from life, you can do this by hold up a straight object to use as a guide.

It is also important to start big before focusing on the fine details. Start by setting up the face and mapping out where everything is suppose to go. Sometimes people hyper focus on making a super detailed eye that they end up not knowing where to put the nose or they put it in the wrong place.

[rajillustration]

This is a hella general topic--is there anything in particular you wanted help with? Otherwise it's like gonna overwhelm you with information. I'm not quite sure what you're looking for.

[rm_manga]

Just do 1 portrait per day. When you do over than 100 portraits you will see your skills increase. Practice makes perfect.