FREAKY Fashion Face Chart Drawing Tutorial - Just in Time for Halloween!

Halloween is right around the corner, so I thought it would be super FUN to create an original drawing with inspiration from TWO fashion face charts! Not sure what a face chart is? No problem. I can't wait to introduce you to them in today's Halloween Drawing project!

Go grab a sheet of bristol, a pencil, and let's draw! 

New to drawing faces? Or have trouble making them look proportional? It's WAY easier than you think.

​Simply click the button below to download my FREE Whimsical Face Drawing Guidelines. I'll email them right over!

Then check your email, print out the guidelines and meet me right back here for today's FUN Halloween fashion face drawing tutorial. 

If you're TOTALLY brand new at drawing faces, you might wanna do this project first :)

What's a Face Chart?

​If you're not familiar with what a face chart is - I want to explain that right off the bat. Face charts are basically drawings of fashion faces that have been used since the 80s by makeup artists to plan out the makeup they'd like to do on their clients.

Tons of these are floating around online from individual makeup artists to big makeup companies like MAC. I think they're gorgeous and often print them out as drawing references to inspire me with new drawing ideas. Isn't this one stunning?! 

It one was done by someone I follow on Instagram, @sonya_miro. I used one of her Halloween makeup looks to inspire me for the spiderweb makeup in today's drawing. 

If you'd like to get a copy of the face charts I'm using in this lesson, I've added them to my YouTube & Cheatsheet Library over at Awesome Art School. Use the coupon code YOUTUBESUB to save 25%.

​How to Draw & Shade a Halloween Fashion Face

I started this face drawing as I do all of them with a bazillion ovals, then slowly sketched in my face drawing guidelines. Once those were in place, I began adjusting my final oval into a face shape similar to my references, with chiseled cheekbones and a pointy jaw. 

Even though we're drawing a semi-realistic face, it will look more sophisticated if the facial features are proportional, so I follow my face drawing guidelines, and pencil in three ovals along the eye line to help me space the eyes out correctly. 

As you'll see in the video, I look at both of the face charts I've printed out for guidance on eye, nose, and lip shape. I mix and match aspects I like from each face chart to create my own original drawing.

Once I'm happy with my main lines, I erase my guidelines and draw in some simple hair so we can start coloring with alcohol markers (my favorite part!!).

If you're new to alcohol markers, they're really fun to use and you can cover your drawings quickly, but there are a few tricks to them. Watch the video and I'll talk you through the layering process and how to blend. If you're a total beginner and need more help, this is a GREAT intro lesson to try first. 

I've tried out ALL the alcohol marker brands over the years and discovered they really all work the same and can be used together interchangeably on a project, as you'll see in today's video.

I needed ALL my greens today so grabbed everything I could find, from my Copics, Ohuhus, Artezas, and ArtBeeks to the cheapies I recently found at Five & Below! 

The way I shade a face with alcohol markers is very systematic. To show dimension on a face I typically use at least three shades of the same color in a light, medium, and dark. 

Then I either make up a shading pattern of highlights and shadows for the face I'm drawing, or look to a reference image (WAY EASIER!!), like the green face chart (by @moiseartnyc on Instagram) I'm using today.

Isn't the reference image above gorgeous?! 

The pic below, on the other hand... not so much! LOL. 

This is what I lovingly refer to as "the ugly stage." It happens to ALL of us in EVERY project. It's the point in your project when you pause, look down to see how it's going, and freak out. It's the point when you decide your work looks like garbage and think you should probably throw it in the trash.

DON'T!!!!

This is "the ugly stage," and it's trying to get the better of you. Accept it, acknowledge your work isn't finished yet, and KEEP GOING. 

If you KEEP PUSHING THROUGH till the end of the project, you will have another art experience under your belt that you've completed. Whether or not you love your finished work, you've gained experience and it's made you grow as an artist.

Take a look at my next picture.... 

As soon as I started adding in eyebrows and drawing eyelashes, my character started coming to life, and the ugly stage disappeared. 

Once I finished my outlining and details in black, I added some white colored pencil on areas of the face that needed highlights, and got ready to start the crazy spiderweb makeup!

Make sure you click over to the video because the spiderweb makeup is in real-time (no timelapsing!), so you can see exactly how I do this, step-by-step. 

I'm not gonna lie... I was pretty nervous adding this part in!! But in the end, it's just a drawing, right? And it's just FOR FUN!! 

SPOILER ALERT: The spiderweb makeup turned out great!!

I hope YOU draw along with me today!!

And please, if you do... take TWO pix of your drawing for me so you can share them in the Facebook Group. Take one of your ugly stage (I know it's hard - but we're ALL doing it!!), and one of your finished piece. 

It's gonna be SO encouraging to see all these posts. 

It's also gonna be more than a little hilarious to scroll through all these ugly stages at once, am I right?! 

​See ya there!!

​Need more resources to get your creative juices flowing?
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❤️ CHECK OUT ALL my online art classes @ Awesome Art School
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