How to Draw Realistic Facial Hair - EASIER THAN YOU THINK! Video Lecture

hello everybody welcome back to my
channel so in this video I'm going to be
sharing with you my technique for
drawing realistic facial hair using
colored pencils but quickly before we
start if you guys want to see a
real-time version of this whole drawing
then that is available over on my
patreon for you guys link will be in the
description but anyway guys let's get on
with this tutorial so the first thing to
do when you're growing facial hair is to
fill in some of the skin tone beneath it
and that is because when you draw facial
hair there is quite often times where
you can see little bits of the skin pick
him through where the facial hair is so
especially if it's a bit more patchy if
it's just stubble rather than really
thick facial hair you'll see some of the
skin tone so I like to add a base layer
of the skin tone where the facial hair
actually is going to be so I control the
facial hair on top of it so I'm using a
few different colors just to get the
skin tone accurate with the rest of the
face it's important that you use similar
colors all of the way around the skin so
it's like cohesive and it looks the same
all the way around in the different
areas and so I've used some burnt focus
for the orangey tone areas and Brown
ochres but basically just use the skin
tones that you were using for your
portrait to fill in where the facial
hair is where the facial hair is a bit
patch here a bit sort of less dense and
not as thick where you can see some of
the skin tone underneath the facial hair
and to do this you'll want to lightly
apply the skin tone and build up the
layers until you're happy with the color
and then you can add another layer to
burnish it so it's nice and smooth you
want the skin tone to be smooth like you
would with the rest of the skin tones
but don't burnish it completely because
you will still need to be able to add
layers on top to do the facial hair so
only apply the skin tone where it is
less dense don't apply it in places
where you can't see any skin beneath the
facial hair that would just be pointless
and it may prevent you adding the really
thick facial hair colors later on so as
you can see you're mainly adding the
skin tone where they're sort of stubble
between the nose and the mouth will be
and around the sort of beard area but
I'm not going all of the way down
because it becomes really thick and dark
the further down you go so I'm just
applying it in
in areas and I'm using darker pencils to
get in some of those shadows as well so
you'll be able to see through the facial
hair and see what the shadows there
needs to be on the skintone and just do
this in the same way you would do the
rest of the skin so circular motions
build it up lightly at first and just
apply the pressure that you need in
order to get the smooth skin tone you
won't need to completely press really
hard on your pencil in order to get a
smooth finish
just apply as much pressure as you need
to and in fact it doesn't have to be
completely smooth because a lot of it
you won't actually see but you don't
want it to look really grainy either so
get it looking smooth but it's okay for
a few white bits show through and so I'm
just coming to the end of adding in that
skin tone I'm just layering and getting
the color match accurate to the rest of
the skin so add in the skin tone first
does make it a lot easier because if you
think about it if you have to draw all
of the facial hair first and then try
and work in between to get all of the
bits of skin in it would take so much
time and it probably wouldn't keep the
facial hair as sharp so now what I'm
doing is I'm starting to add in the
facial hair and so I'm using a dark
brown prismacolor pencil for this and
the key is to make sure your pencil is
really really sharp so that you can get
all of that detail and now you need to
look at the facial hair and look how
long it is so this will depend on how
kind of longer the facial hair is if
it's stubble if it's longer like beard
mustache sort of hair and this
determines how long you need to do your
pencil strokes and so his stubble was
quite short at the top just where his
mouth is the mustache bit was quite
short so I'm just doing really short
pencil strokes with the pencil and
keeping it sharp all of the time you
might need to keep sharpening the pencil
and I did that quite a lot because it is
so important that you keep that pencil
nice and sharp and so another thing that
you need to do is look at the little
direction that the facial hair has so is
it curving in a different direction is
it curving with the skin so just look at
the direction and the way the facial
hair curves it's not all just going to
be really really straight it might curve
slightly around to fit in with the
facial shape and structure of the face
so it's really important to look at
those two things the length and how it
curves in the sort of flow and angle of
the hair also you need to focus on
making it look like the facial hair is
growing out of the skin so you don't
want it to just to look like it's a
piece of hair like just wax on top of
the skin it needs to look like it's
growing out to the skin and to do that
you need to feather your pencil strokes
in with the skin you know lightly as you
go at the roots and then you can make it
a bit thicker but do it very lightly as
you can see these aren't really dark I'm
gonna build up to the darkest bits of
facial hair so this is just to block in
all of the sort of areas and the length
and all of the stuff I spoke about with
the facial hair but this is just the
first stage of building up the hair we
want it to look nice and dense in
certain areas nice and thick and to get
that thick look you need to have layers
so this is just the first of a few
different layers and so I took the sort
of mid-tone value not the darkest value
in the facial hair just sort of the
overall mid-tone value of the facial
hair which was this brown color and I'm
just using that to add the facial hair
across the whole of the area no matter
whether it's actually meant to be darker
than this or lighter I'm just blocking
in the whole thing and I'm really
looking at how the facial hair sort of
is growing where it's more patchy and
where it starts to get a bit thicker and
longer and it's really important to look
at these different things and how it
changes in different areas in order to
get a realistic look because as you can
see towards the bottom towards the chin
area it starts very patchy Lee and then
it starts to get longer and thicker
towards the bottom of the chin and
looking at the direction of those you
can see that all of my lines are nice
and curves they're going in a certain
direction and not just all straight and
that makes it look nice and realistic
it's flowing with the shape of the chin
and especially under the chin it's going
to flow with that sort of curvature of
the chin as well so now I'm going in
with the black pencil and this is
obviously darker than the brown pencil
and so I'm looking at the reference
image and I'm looking for the darkest
bits of the facial hair and this tends
to be where it's a bit more dense so
where it's a bit more thicker and it's
not as sparse so really look at your
reference photo and try to pull up the
key shadowed areas and go
/ with the black and so I'm not doing
this all over and I'm doing it in
exactly the same way I'm looking at the
length of the facial hair the way it's
curving and I'm just kind of really
gradually transitioning it from that
skin I'm not doing really thick sort of
pencil strokes it starts off nice and
thin and it might get thicker towards
the end but it's so important that you
keep that pencil sharp because you don't
want really thick clunky looking strands
of hair and you don't need to do every
single strand of facial hair exactly
like your reference photo it's gonna be
impossible to get every single tiny
detail exactly the same just look at the
general sort of thickness of the facial
hair the direction it's go in and how
it's built up is it dense with certain
areas and thicker just look at those
sort of things but don't try and draw
every single bit of facial hair in the
exact same place as your reference
chances are you won't be able to do that
and it doesn't really matter so I'm just
still building up those shadows you can
go back in with the brown and add some
more little lighter facial hair hairs if
you want to you can switch between the
pencils if you notice areas that need a
bit more facial hair adding to them and
also if you do something and you're not
happy with it then you can just get an
eraser and erase that out as you can see
towards the bottom of the chin it's a
lot thicker so I'm using a lot more of
the black towards the bottom and you can
see that towards the bottom of the chin
you can't see any of the skin anymore
and this indicates that it's a lot
thicker down that area because the fact
that we can't see any of the skin
showing through towards the bottom of
the chin shows that it's a lot thicker
and there's less sort of sparse areas so
it's important to really look at where
you can see the skin and where you can't
in the initial stage when you're
blocking in the skin because where you
cut where you don't put it that's where
you're going to have really thick facial
hair look to it so now what I'm doing is
I'm going in with an exacto knife and
this is the most important part to the
whole process for me it's the part that
really brings it to life and so the
exacto knife is used to pull up bits of
the color pencil and when you pull up
the color pencil it leaves lighter
layers so it's scraping off that darker
look to reveal
those lighter layers those like skin
tone values underneath and so this means
that we can create highlights so a lot
of the time you'll have facial hair and
there will be these really white bits of
hair and facial hair showing through and
so it's gonna be really hard to go on
top of this facial hair with like a
whites color pencil you'd get to the
lines would be too thick it would be
really unnatural and unrealistic
so it's important to go in with this
knife because you can get such fine
detail and fine tiny little stubble
hairs which you can't do with an eraser
or with a colored pencil they just won't
get that fine
and so you can get these incredible
little details which really makes it
look a lot more realistic and so this is
a much easier way then for example
trying to put all of the skin tone in
between all of the bits of hair and then
trying to use pencils and erasers to
pull up the highlights it's just so much
easier and I think this technique would
help a lot of you guys create realistic
looking facial hair a lot easier and a
lot quicker but anyway guys that is it
for this tutorial I really hope you
enjoyed it like I said I have so many
tutorial series available on my patreon
all in real-time with voiceover whether
that's portraits animals or just objects
and stuff like that in loads of
different mediums they're all available
over on there but anyway guys that is it
for this video if you're new around here
and you enjoyed this tutorial and you
want to see even more tutorials make
sure you hit that subscribe button
I'll see you guys in the next video bye
everybody