Tutorial on Painting the French Ligne - Part 5

Back to the tutorial. The next part can take a lot of time, if you let it. Now we are going to paint the faces.

First I start out by drawing the nose, bridge, and chin with a brown pen. This helps define where everything else will go. Go crazy with different types; it will give each figure character.

Next, I define the ears a little better with the brown pen. Again, don't be afraid to make different shapes.

Next, I do the eyes in stages. The picture below shows, from left to right, the steps I follow.

1. Paint an almond shape in white for the eye. Don't worry about being perfect as the other colors will define the final shape.
2. Paint the iris color. Most should be brown, unless the ethnicity of the figure dictates otherwise.
3. Here I have painted the eyebrows next using the figure's hair color (or a darker shade).
4. Paint a thin black line on the top of the eye for the eyelashes. Paint a darker shade of flesh on the bottom for the "bags" under the eyes.

You might find it easier to switch steps 3 and 4. If you want a flesh colored gap between the eyelash and eyebrow, it is easier to reverse the steps.

Finally, I paint the mouth. As I still don't have a satisfactory method there, I am going to cop out and leave that for when I do. For now, you can draw a thin line with your brown pen so the chin won't look like the mouth.