Drawing Faces: Nose

Hello Mibba. I’m back again with faces, but this time, we’re going to draw the nose. Hopefully none of you threw away or lost your previous pictures of your lips (assuming anyone even bothered to draw the lips) because we’re going to be working from there. If some of you are first time viewers of this, then you might want to look at the tutorial on lips because I’m going to make references from that.

Now, I don’t know why for some people noses are harder to draw than lips because personally, they require less detail than the lips, but none of that matters right now because I’m going to make it easier for all of you.

First thing I’d like you to do is take your finger and place it between your nose and your lips. You should notice that your nose is about a finger distance from your lips. Now, depending on how much to scale your lips are, you’re going to want to make your nose about a finger distance apart from your lips. If you make it any smaller or bigger, it might look awkward when we later draw the space between the two. Because my lips are a little smaller in proportion to my finger, I’m going to use my pinky. Once you have where the bottom of your nose will start, begin drawing the contour of your nose. If you need help with that, look at your own nose or a picture of another nose. I’m making mine up.

Now that I think about the nose more, I can see where it can be more difficult to draw versus the lips. For one, lip shading barely varies. Its lightest were the middle is and darker on the edges. With the nose, the shading varies a lot. To help get an idea of where the shading will be darker than other places, look at your nose from a side face point of view. The areas that protrude the most will be the lightest, and the areas were the light doesn’t hit as much will be the darkest. That means the tip of the nose will be the lightest, and the nostrils will be the darkest. Again, I’m going to use a 2H pencil.

Now because the bridge of the nose runs up to the eyes, we’re also going to draw all the way up into the curve of the eye socket. Note that that size of the nose bridge is about the same length as the width of the nose, (at least mine is) but the sizes might vary slightly. You’re going to curve the line right below the imaginary brow bone because later on through these tutorials it will represent the depth of the eyes.

Here’s the finished product. I took a picture of the whole drawing so far. If you notice, my lips have slightly changed because I’ve added a little more detail and value. For everyone else, I would also like to see your progress, and feel free to ask any questions you may have regarding your drawing.

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