Have a kid who loves to draw? Check out our NEW Drawing Skills Master Class!  Designed for kids 6-11 to gain skills and confidence.

Drawing Faces for Kids

by Jean Van't Hul
August 27, 2014

We’ve been drawing a lot of faces around here. Self portraits in the traditional style as well as body tracing self portraits and collage self portraits. Drawing faces remains one of our family’s favorite ways to express our creativity. And not just our family. The human face is one of the subjects that many children draw repeatedly over the years, beginning with the most basic circle and eyes around 3.

Drawing Faces for kids

The Human Face in Childrens Art

As you can see in the above collection of photos, my kids have made faces in everything from the sandbox to clay, playdough, paper, and more.

Daphne, at 4 almost 5, still includes herself in almost everything she draws.

Drawing Faces for Kids - Maia's portraits

And Maia at 9 (today!) has been taking her portrait and self-portrait drawing more and more seriously—working on details and accuracy. And, unfortunately, getting frustrated when what she draws doesn’t match what she sees in the mirror or in front of her.

Maia Drawing Her Face

So when I downloaded and printed out a handy guide from Craftsy that clearly showed how to draw the human face step-by-step with information about placement and proportions, she was thrilled!

Drawing the Human Face Craftsy Printable Guide

And so was I. This was just the kind of easy-to-use guide and reminder that both of us needed. Basic information in a usable format means less frustration on her part, being happier with the finished product, and less eraser drama (yes, we have it too).

How to Draw Faces Craftsy Guide

Plus it’s helped me to get over my hesitation to try portrait drawing!

Jean's first portrait drawings in a long, long time

It’s been so long since I’ve done much drawing and I clearly need some more practice, but it feels good to have made the plunge and given it a try again.

Learning to Draw a Portrait

Besides this drawing guide, which I’m sure we’ll be referring to quite a bit in the future, I think I may need to sign myself up for one of their portrait drawing classes! This is something I’d love to work on.

Craftsy is offering this portrait drawing guide for FREE to Artful Parent readers. It’s a 25-page guide, valued at $4.99, that you can download and print.

Click here to download your free copy of Drawing the Human Face.

It is written for adults, but, I think, easily used by older kids and teens who would like to learn to draw faces more accurately. Maia found the guide helpful, mostly just referring to the images and listening to me read and talk about the text.

Daphne Drawing a Portrait

Daphne was inspired to join us in drawing faces at the table. She drew more detail on hers than usual, but didn’t attempt (or even seem to notice) the proportions we were trying carefully to reproduce.

How about your family? Do your kids like to draw faces? Would they (or you?!) appreciate a simple guide that shows where to place the eyes, ears, nose more accurately?

If so, print one out to keep with your drawing supplies. (You may be asked to register with Craftsy which you can do with your name and email address or through facebook.)

This post was sponsored by Craftsy; all opinions expressed are my own.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Print
Share
Pin