Some of you have asked me about how to use the Face Map Stencils so I thought I’d give you a little demo on one of the ways you can use them.

Using a simple pencil you can trace through the stencil for the face guidelines. This is a great way to fearlessly practice your sketching, shading and drawing techniques.

Start with a light 4H lead and begin to add some cross hatching to the areas that need shading. This helps you to begin defining the planes of the face and determine where your highlights will be. It’s easy to change things when you start out light. NOTE: I went darker on the outlines so you would be able to see them in the photos, you would want to go much lighter.

Smudge out your shading with a blending stump. Stumps are great tools for drawing. They are cheap and will help you move the graphite around on the paper and soften the lines.

Add more cross hatching with softer leads, try a 2B

Blend this out with the stump as well, and continue on building tonal values in your work. Remove graphite as needed with a kneaded eraser.

You will want to have mostly mid tone values with a few very dark tones to emphasize the facial features.

Add hair and continue tweaking until you feel your drawing is finished. It’s amazing but even with starting from a stencil, each drawing will end up with different look and you can change up the features as you become more confident in your drawing skills.  The guidelines can be erased when you are finished.

Here are some other examples of using the stencils for both sketching and in journal work.