How to draw a human face

Have you ever been at a place, say, the airport, and it was just fun to watch people? It is fun to look at all the faces of all the travelers...every one of them completely unique. Have your kids ever wanted help drawing a human face? Today I will give you a simple demonstration on how to draw a face.

 "Decades of scientific research shows that faces are of particular importance even to newborn babies. In the first several hours after birth, a baby can recognize her mother’s face and distinguish that face from strangers...Clearly, faces are an important factor in infant development," says  Kaitlyn Torrez, on the blog KeaBabies.  We are born with a fascination with faces. This is evident to us every time we interact with our new grandbaby--look at his preferential gaze to his mama!

And many children love to draw faces. I often incorporate some type of portrait drawing in Storygalorey classes. I like to give kids lots of practice drawing the proportions of the human face. In the last year, we've drawn faces in mosaics, in court jesters, and in what-if-I-looked-like-an-animal self-portraits. 

I thought it might be helpful to demonstrate an easy portrait using simple lines so kids could practice getting the proportions right. So, if you'd like your kids to practice drawing faces, here's a simple how-to tutorial to get the proportions right. Grab a colored pencil or crayon, and start drawing! You can draw lots of faces in the next two weeks as we prepare for Thanksgiving. Have your kids try one of these ideas: 

• Draw faces of the relatives you'll be with on Thanksgiving-or make their hand-drawing portraits into placemats or placecards! (the proportions will stay the same whether your paper is tiny, medium, or large) Encourage kids to think about what makes each person unique--hair and eye color, glasses, big smile, etc. 
• Have each child in your family draw a face of someone else in the family on a notecard. Give the family member the card with a few words telling why you are thankful for them ("Aunt Denise-I am thankful for your kind heart")
• Keep the creativity going by downloading the free family art calendar

As your kids practice drawing the human face, remind them to use their imaginations and to keep trying. As long as they have a piece of paper and a marking tool, they can keep going and use their imaginations to give their characters names, and even a story to go with their faces. 

Happy Drawing,

Jennifer

Here's the link to the art calendar!