idk if you mind talking about art tips bc a lot of artists can go either way (v understandable tbh) but do you have any tips for simplifying people? ngl studying anatomy especially actors makes me go feral but your art inspires me to keep going! i love the way you draw is simplified but distinct so you absolutely know who it is, your expressions give them a pop! whenever i feel stumped i look at your art to get myself in gear, love what you do! okbye
Thank you so much for your kind words! I don’t mind at all! If something’s not explained very well, please bear with me, I’m not used to making tutorials orz Also please keep in mind I’m self-taught! Nothing I’m saying here comes from a place of actual professional art training.
I’m mostly going to use Michael Mando and Tony Dalton as examples here, as their faces are the ones I draw the most lately and I feel most confident talking about.
The first thing you wanna do is identify the most striking features of a face.
Let’s call it the lowest common denominator. What does a face need to look like Tony Dalton or Michael Mando, or more specifically, what does it need to look like Lalo or Nacho.
That’s a very subjective question of course, but to me, it’s these features:
Lalo is a MUCH easier example to work with than Nacho, so we’re starting with him. His mustache and soul patch are excellent shorthand to bring his character across, and the very striking creases around his mouth as well as his gray-streaked hair make it even easier to identify him.
Note how I didn’t add anything except for the traits I circled and it’s already recognizably Lalo. It’s not even important to get every trait 100% right if you just focus on these most striking features. From here on out, it doesn’t really matter whether the eyebrows or the nose look absolutely perfect. You can just approximate them and it’s fine.
That gives us a lot of wiggle room for expressions etc! For example, I was free to exaggerate his eyebrows into a slightly more “demonic” looking form to fit his chaotic energy ♥
Nacho is much harder to pinpoint imho. He doesn’t have an easy shortcut like a specific hairstyle, and despite the fact that his facial hair isn’t all that different from Lalo’s, it’s not half as striking. No, what sets Nacho’s face apart from most others are his very intense, heavy-lidded, constantly done-with-your-shit looking eyes, and the shape of his nose. Which makes our job as artists much harder, because we can’t just stylize his nose in whatever way we’ve grown accustomed to, and we can’t just let his eyes take any shape for expressions.
We can’t rely on shortcuts here - We will have to bite the bullet and actually try and figure out his eyes and nose.
The most important parts to pay attention here are the arcs of the eyelids, the eyelid fold, the arc of the eyebrows, how far apart they are, creases under the eyes if necessary, etc. Take these traits, make them your own. Once you figured that out, you are free to simplify them as much as you want.
Not quite Nacho yet, but we’re getting there. He already has that fed up expression! This is where minor traits become important, like the facial hair, jewelry etc.
And there it is, the most basic of Nachos.
A person who’s better at drawing lips than me could also pay better attention to his mouth, as esp Nacho’s lower lip is quite prominent as well. I never figured out how to do that. Instead, I focus on another factor: You’d be surprised how much you can achieve just by playing with the shape of the corners of the mouth!
Note how I also had to change the shape of the base’s head the slightest bit! Characters like Nacho, who are bald or have little hair, force us to pay extra special attention to that trait. BrBa/BCS has a great many characters like that!
I can’t stress enough how much it doesn’t matter that you get a character’s face photo realistic for them to be recognizable. Identify those two or three most striking features about the person you wanna draw, focus on that, and try to approximate the rest.
Play around with exaggeration and omission, heavy stylization or simplification, what works, what doesn’t. Never stop using references, and allow yourself to learn from others and from your own mistakes.
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