Drawing Men and Women (Part 1: Parts of the face)

Painting women as women.
Painting men as men.
This may seem like the most rudimentary, but it’s a profound subject that many beginners tend to ignore.

If you learn to draw men (or women) according to gender, your drawings will become more attractive and convincing as men (or women).
We hope you’ll stay with us until the end of this series.

In the first article of this series, I’ll show you how to draw men (or women) according to the parts of their faces.
Beginners often make the mistake of drawing men and women differently, of changing their hairstyles only to end up with the same face, which results in a person who cannot be distinguished as male or female.

When trying to draw young people, such as moe characters, if you try to deal with these limited differences, you are likely to fail.
However, drawing a character requires knowledge of muscles and skeletal structure, and is a very deep and difficult task.
You probably have that image.
So, first of all, I’ll introduce a simple and easy method.

That’s how I’d like to show you how to draw only the parts of the face.
When you draw a man’s face and a woman’s face, there is a clear difference in their features.
Of course, there are various styles of painting, but I will introduce only the most common ones here.

Male
My eyebrows are straight and thick.
Eyebrows and eyes are close together.
small-eyed
Thin upper eyelid lines and dark lower eyelid lines
The nose line is clear and straight.
Large mouth and high position.
The three-dimensionality of a part is expressed in shadows.
thick-necked

Female
Curved and thin eyebrows.
Eyebrows and eyes are far apart.
having big eyes
Thick upper eyelid lines, thin lower eyelids and long lashes
Nose lines are curved and not clearly drawn.
Small mouth and low position
The three-dimensionality of the parts is expressed by the highlights.
thin-necked

Let’s compare the male and female characters with these features on them side by side.

Even though the hairstyle and facial contours are the same, I think you can sense the differences between the men and women.
What do you think? It’s an assumption that “you can’t distinguish between men and women unless you change the main features, such as the hairstyle,” and depending on how deformed the picture is, you may find that this is not an important factor at all.

If you can remember these characteristics, you can use them to create a “masculine girl” or “gentle boy” by combining both male and female characteristics, as shown in the figure below, which will greatly expand the range of character expressions.
We hope you’ll take advantage of it!

How do you like the first part of the series, “Separating Men and Women”?
This was a simple method that doesn’t require a lot of complicated knowledge, but if you read what I’m going to show you in the next installment, you’ll have a much more practical, broadly applicable skill!
Thank you for watching!

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