Expanding On The Skull: Drawing Baby Faces!

Drawing baby faces is an art form in its own right. Unlike the adult faces that we have accustomed to seeing, it's not very often that we see baby faces to reference from.

Most of it comes from magazines or other types of printed material. If you're lucky with family or friends, you may have a real life baby to study from. Even then, it is hard to study babies as they like to move around a lot.

This is why it's imperative to memorize the forms as best as you can to save yourself the frustration of looking for references. What's more, the reference points for baby faces shifts a bit lower than the normal adult human face. That means you can't use the reference points from the adult heads.

Ready to start your learning?

1. The framework

To start drawing baby faces, you need to realize that the biggest difference between an adult face and a baby's face is what to draw for the central intersection (that divides the face into four quadrants). In adults, you draw the eyes. However, for babies, you draw the eyebrows.

The reason for this is how the a baby's head develops. The cranium is always the largest part, followed by the eyes, that is the most developed. All the other areas are smaller and will develop over time.

That means you have to shift the face downwards and begin with the eyebrows. After that, further divide the bottom of the face into four sections. The middle section is for the bottom of the nose.

For comparison purposes, the red lines indicate where the features of the adult face would go.

2. Creating your own head

Once you memorize these important divisions, you can begin drawing baby faces in free form. Always start with the middle intersection and work outwards from there.

Build the cranium and the bottom part of the face. Unlike the adult face, where you build a trapezoid type shape, you can do another oval shape for the baby's head. This is because the chin is less developed so it slopes inwards into the head.

Already you are beginning to see how a baby's face is being formed.

Keep on dividing the rest of the shapes into manageable segments. Remember the four divisions at the bottom sections of the head.

3. Creating the planes

The difficulty is seeing where are the planes are since a baby's face is very round. However, it is not impossible. Just focus on planes you are already familiar with, such as the eyes and nose, and work to expand it all around the face.

Most of the planes will be around the mouth region as that is where the majority of the baby fat will be. For the other areas, just a rough sketch of the planes will be fine so long as you can see where the light will hit.

Once you're done with that, the face should have all the necessary points for you to being drawing baby faces.

4. Building the face

Like I mentioned, the eyes are mostly developed. That means they eyes will be fairly big compared to the rest of the face. For the nose, focus on just the actual nose itself. You should not have to draw a nose bridge at all as it is well indented between the eyes. A light shadow is enough.

As for the lips, focus on making the sides of the top lips puffy. You want to emphasize that baby fat as much as possible.

They key for the rest of the face is to focus on creating a round chin. The fat will create very round and bulgy cheeks. Have it curve all the way downwards into the chin. Then, have the chin protrude just a little outside of the baby fat.

The neck itself is barely shown because the body of a baby is small compared to the head. Draw it accordingly. Make sure to use the planes to figure out light and shading elements.

When everything is said and down, you should have a pretty good idea of drawing baby faces. It's all thanks to the basic framework of facial divisions that you have memorized and practiced.

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