How to DRAW & SHADE a Whimsical Native American Face in Copic Markers!!!

Today I'm beginning a new face drawing series on my YouTube Drawing channel that I'm super excited to share with you.

Last week when I was live in my Facebook group, I asked members what they were interested in learning over on YouTube, and we came up with drawing a series of SEXY faces in various ethnicities! THEY requested the "sexy" part, which cracked me up! LOL! 

This week's tutorial is in REAL TIME, so go grab a pencil and a sheet of card stock or something similar (for alcohol marker art) if you'd like to work alongside me. 

​I love the Native American reference photo I found for today! There are so many FUN elements to her look that we're going to enjoy playing with!! She's got some sexy, dramatic makeup going on, and a tiny braid with feathers in her hair. 

To get us started, as always, begin by sketching in our face drawing guidelines to make sure the face we're drawing is proportionally correct.  

When you've got the facial features exactly how you want them, go over those lines with a fine copic multi-liner. A sharpie works well here too - if you don't have one of the copics! 

Once she's outlined, I pulled a variety of skin tone markers from my copic stash to see what might work well together.

DON'T SKIP THIS STEP!

Take a minute to do some copic marker swatches of your skin tones on a scrap piece of paper.  

This is super important because if you start laying down color based on the caps and what you THINK will come out- something inevitably goes wrong ;) TRUST ME!! From my collection, I decided to pull Yellowish Shade, Light Orange, Light Caramel, Light Suntan, Baked Clay, Chamois, Hazelnut, Leather, Copper, Dark Suntan and Dark Brown. 
 
I started my face shading with the darkest shade today, and studied my reference photo carefully to inform the shadows I recreated. 

​Once I had a good base for the darkest darks down, I start pulling in the medium and lighter skin tones. Then, I use my lighter markers to blend out some of my marker strokes and to soften the transition between colors. 

​The makeup in my reference photo is really dramatic (which I LOVE!), so when I've finished with the main skin tones, I bring in a couple shades of gray to add a bit more depth into the darker areas of her makeup - especially around the eyes, along the left side of her cheek, and a touch onto the lips!  Then, I head straight for my crimson marker to color those gorgeous, full lips!

​Even though the hair in my reference photo is basically black, I decided to alter that to dark browns so I could show some highlights and lowlights in the hair to make things a bit more colorful.

​Once these sections of hair were colored, I added a touch of black outline (you can totally use a sharpie here, that nib  may even feel a bit more stable for these lines). Next, I pulled out a variety of skin tones from my prismacolor colored pencils to blend the shadows a bit more and soften some of the transition lines between marker shades. I even use an indigo in some of my shadows because shadows are "cool colors," and bringing in some indigo or a deep plum add a bit more sophistication to your work. 

For the final layers, I added a few lip lines in colored pencil to her bottom lip, pulled a few white colored pencil lines through her hair for highlights, attacked that dramatic, white makeup with my posca paint pen, and added in some eyelashes with my pentel pocket brush. LOVE!!!

​l hope you enjoy today's drawing tutorial!  Thanks for watching and I'll see ya next week!!