How to Draw: Faces

Just about anybody who has any interest in art at all wishes that they could draw faces - capturing our own and our loved ones’ likenesses is a very basic desire. Learn to draw faces from scratch with another in this series on basic drawing skills. There are all sorts of head and shoulder studies in here to capture; young and old, pretty and less so, black, white and other races, babies and pairs of people. Breaking it down in the way this series does, starting with basic shapes and adding more details one step at a time works remarkably well with everything but particularly so with faces. I confess that this is the hardest thing to draw for me but working my way through the stages produced some of my best work so there is hope for everybody! The fifth stage shows the full pencil drawing, and the sixth and final stage shows what it looks like in watercolors. Getting from #5 to #6 is always the hardest part with these books, but it does get you thinking about what goes where and why which is all to the good. Apart from the introduction which explains something about how to use the book there are no other words, just pictures and this method works well, showing that a picture really is worth a thousand words. I look forward to see what subjects this series tackles next.-Myshelf.com In this slender yet useful book, Susie draws a wide variety of different shaped faces in a step by step style that allows you to see the thinking behind the shapes that compose a face and the different stages of development.-Craft Focus

Susie Hodge has a passion for art education and has been teaching practical art and art history to children and adults for over 11 years. She has written and illustrated many drawing books. She also works for the Royal Academy, the Tate and the V&A Museum to produce booklets for visitors, teachers and students. She lives in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex.