Hi. I'm a grub and I live in the soil.

You can see how I work through Kim and Jimmy's faces here: First I trace directly over screencaps from the show, focusing on marking the distance of each feature and its placement on their head shapes. How close is the brow to the eye, nose from the middle of the mouth, etc.

After tracing it out, I do some freehand sketches relying more on the shapes and proportions I've mapped out. The little arrows I've drawn next to some of the faces help me remember to keep note of the way certain lines or shapes curve into others. These are great things to exaggerate, because when you keep these things accurate and intact, the illusion of likeness comes through.

Whether you actively recognize it or not, your brain is always making connections to the negative space relationships between features almost as much as the shapes and positions of the features themselves.

Another thing I like to do is collect much more detailed, organized reference of the character I'm drawing and figure out the harmonies of the face. This is kind of a bastardized and oversimplified Reilly method, where I'll draw straight lines connecting each feature of the face to build landmarks. You can see me working though that here, with Barry.

I started figuring out his head shape, but I also found that the midpoint of his furrowed brow creates a triangle shape with the shape of his nose down to the edges of his mouth. Keeping this shape consistent, even in simplified/stylistic depictions of the character, means he will always be a little recognizable, because the part of your brain that knows what Barry looks like connects with that existing shape.

Playing with those abstractions can help you experiment with how you want a character to look. Don't worry if they don't look perfect. That's the fun of study. Here are a handful of Kimmies, each varying in % of likeness (and degrees of success), but all keeping some key points of her "design". You can see where I start to play with features, removing some things, tinkering with others.

Another little note...since we view these people through cameras, different focal lengths can affect the way their features are proportioned (take a look at the perceived width and height of Hader's enormous fucking head in the upper right corner compared to the adjacent images, for example)–– so this is a good way to keep that in check when you're doing studies. As always, this isn't drawing law. Draw fanart however you please, and feel free to discard all of this information! This is simply my approach, and it is fun for ME!

Thanks for reading.