You can begin to explore your own style by paying attention to a few things and by tweaking your own face maps. While there are many “rules” to drawing portraits, we are here, because, as mixed-media artists, we know there’s even more fun to be had when we play around and bend a few rules! That said, there are some things that can make a face look off kilter. This is why it’s important to start with a good foundation for facial feature placement. This will help you when you are trying to identify things that aren’t working in your drawings and paintings.
Look through your sketches and see if something consistently jumps out at you. Do you always make your eyes a little too big, or do your faces have small noses or long necks? Paying attention to something you do unconsciously is one way to recognize your natural style as it emerges. Pull something from your own face or head and exaggerate it slightly in your portraits. This can be a bump on your nose, high cheekbones, a wide forehead, a beauty mark, thick eyebrows—anything that you love about your face or maybe something that bothers you. Putting something of you into your portraits instantly sets them apart from someone else’s.
Creating a longer nose requires placing the eyes mid-head mass but still with one eye width between. The relationship of the nose to the mouth remains the same.
Here are some facial features that can be easily tweaked to help create a more stylized look:
While the eyes are larger in this example, they remain in the same position on the face. All other features also remain in the same position.
The mouth is both smaller and positioned lower in this example. By elongating the neck as well, the overall look is changed.