I started out doodling and ended up 3 hours later with this. It's my first try at drawing a person, in this case, my wife. I know it's not great but I'm my own harshest critic and I'm satisfied, although I have a lot to do yet.

Ok, it's not bad. There's some typical first mistakes, with proportion and such. Eyes are not exactly level.

My advice is, look up some tutorials on drawing humans. Look up on how to sketch out the proportions first, use of guidelines, etc. The best way to do it is to first draw a crude model that's basically just a hairless, featureless dummy, that only outlines the main contours. Then use guidelines to help you get the locations for eyes, nose, mouth and ears right. Then just draw the actual sketch on top of that, on a new layer.

I'm myself still practicing drawing people, and I'm not exactly a master at it. It's hard, especially when you get to doing more than faces, and try other angles than the usual ones. But practice makes perfect.

Also, work on shading. A good use of light and shade does wonders for a drawing. Brings it to life and gives texture.

If that's your first time drawing a human, I think you did a wonderful job Gms9810.

Definitely a good first try and do look at some tutorials, you'll be amazed how the facial features all align with each other, for example the edges of the mouth are inline with the centre of the eyes.

excellent for first try. One thing I see in many drawings of faces is the eyes are not quite right. The whole iris usually doesn't show under the lids unless one is purposely opening their eyes wide.

Her eyes aren't 'level' because her head was tilted, they would have looked really weird if I had made them level. Yeah, I know about the round eyes but hers were that way in the pic.

And yeah, it was the first human i've ever drawn, except for stick men.

I think it's an excellent first attempt, especially as I think you've started with a difficult image that appears to have very flat lighting - shadows help to define the shapes.

No doubt you can now look at it and find fault, so you don't need me telling you what I think is wrong (which is very difficult anyway without seeing the subject), but I will say that as a piece of art the tonal balance needs some work - the hat is much denser and is overwhelming the face.

I have a book that I have found quite useful: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which stresses the importance of drawing what you see and not what you think you see, so be careful with advice that there are "rules" to drawing people- maybe try and use them to analyse your drawing: i.e. Where is the edge of the mouth relative to the eye?

Kevin

That's an excellent first attempt and you will improve with practice and observation. Keep enjoying it and it will work for you.

Nice work for a first try! Realistic people are so hard that's why I'll do anime/manga style or go half and half.
I think you have talent, just need practice!

Things to fix or keep in mind for next time:

The extra line under the nose unless it's shading (which then show it darker) look a lil weird, and are unneeded.
Her eye to our left is turned a bit, and her glasses to my vision look a little awkward.
And lastly her mouth shape could be a lil more defined.

With the mouth the closing of the mouth isn't a line but looks similar to the top lip only in the middle of the closed "shape" of the mouth.

Nice work keep it up!

~ God Bless ~

~ Moko