Tag Archives: how to draw heads

How to Draw Heads for Character Design and Illustration

Drawing heads for character illustrations doesn’t have to be difficult. A head is just a blob at the top of a body. The important bits are what you draw on top of the features that define the mood and emotion… the hats and clothes, glasses and beards that define the character.

Creating characters is not about accurate life drawing as a serious Artist – (capital A!).

Many characters only ever need one or two head-shapes for a whole book or series. Practice those heads and you can soon be drawing them easily. Even more complicated characters only ever need a small library of head positions, so concentrate on learning those.

In this video I discuss heads on characters drawn by great children’s book illustrators and then show how you basic head construction and how you can learn draw your own heads quite quickly. There are amazon links to the books mentioned below. (I get an affiliate fee to help pay for my website, but you pay no more.)

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Website https://www.shoorayner.com

music by http://www.youtube.com/cleffernotes

Everyone asks about the tools I use. Here’s a video to show you what and how I use them. https://youtu.be/QJwjV1FKdyg

Rotring Tikky Graphic Pen

http://amzn.to/2hLNgQo in the UK 

http://amzn.to/2zRyH4y in the USA  

http://amzn.to/2E3qL08 in Canada

00:00:00 Introduction

00:00:23 Alice Teniel  https://amzn.to/3HkSYAS

00:00:35 Alice Arthur Rackham. https://amzn.to/3Hnocr7

00:01:22 The Queens Knickers. https://amzn.to/3vKQRnq

00:01:44 The Day the Crayons Quit. https://amzn.to/4b3vi1R

00:02:09 Supertato. https://amzn.to/3U4BgJE

00:02:24 Going Swimming. https://amzn.to/3TZI0sl

00:02:36 Where the wild things are. https://amzn.to/3Hm72Kx

00:04:01 One snowy Day. https://amzn.to/4b1SM7c

00:04:18 Little Mole  https://amzn.to/47FrdOc

00:04:41 Greek Myths. https://amzn.to/3tXiola

00:05:10 Tiddler. https://amzn.to/3O5KUIg

00:05:37 Arthur  https://amzn.to/3O8wS8B

00:05:51 Rupert Bear. https://amzn.to/48BKLEE

00:06:30 Where the wild things are Drawing

00:07:06 Turn faces into different characters

00:08:18 Differentiating characteristics

00:10:10 Different eye types

00:11:12 Different head shapes

00:12:47 Monster Boy

00:13:30 Conclusions