Tutorial: Human Form, Back of the Head

This tutorial will be focused on understanding the proportions and shading from a different angle. As you can see the ear lines up with the eyes and the eyes are roughly aligned with the hole of the ear. Now everyones facial features can be slightly different so don't feel restricted by these alignments, but they only provide a rough guide to proportioning and positioning. The shading here is perfect and it clearly shows the light direction combined with the correct proportioning, this is why such a simple perspective drawing has such a realistic feel towards it.

Although the soft shading created here is done with charcoal smudging, you can still create the same effect using pencils, erasers, and smudging. To create this shading using a pencil try to use a light pencil such as a 2H or 3H, then you want to start by creating soft gradients on where you want the shading to be. Firstly you need to understand the curves of the face to be able to recognise where to shade, this only comes with practice and observation. Anyway this will then leave soft remnants of the lines, so then to get the overall soft shading as shown above, you then use either your eraser, smudge stick or even your finger to try and smudge the lines so that they aren't so noticeable anymore.

Make sure you shade in the direction of the object as shown by the hair, all the lines are curved towards the bun of the hair creating a realistic look. Now to create the shading of the hair you want to create the same sort of gradient effect as the skin. Then to create the white highlights in the hair you want to either avoid drawing in those spots, or an easier way is to use your eraser to erase some of the shading to help show how the light hits the hair. The hair also has very thin strands that stick out on the outer edges of the hair, just use a sharp pencil to draw them to add another layer of detail and realism. Don't be disappointed if you can't create the amount of detail as shown above, since the drawing above is very advanced and can only be created through practice.

Feel free to post your outcome in the comments section below, have fun!

Artist: Tkamp11
Picture retrieved from: Trying something new graphite,charcoal, and sharpie on paper.