Drawing Faces

A few months ago I bought the DVD All About Faces with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer.  She teaches the correct proportions for drawing a pleasing face and also shading techniques.   Luckily she also has suggestions for different ways to draw eyes and noses.  Here are some of my drawings.

This was my first drawing where I was learning the
proper placement of all the facial features.

I added shading on my second drawing.

The video also showed ways to make
simple cartoon-like faces. 

My first attempt at drawing a man.
I added the goatee so that it was obviously male.

Recently I watched a collage video by Jenny Cochran Lee in which she talked about drawing faces in her art.  She starts with the hair rather than the oval face.  That seemed like a good idea so I tried her technique as well.

Now that I understand the proportions and the placement, I want to work on making the faces look happy (mine are extremely serious).  Then I want to use more color for the shading. I have lots of practice ahead of me, but my goal is not portraiture. I want to be able to add faces to my artwork - some fun and silly, others a little more realistic.  I will need to learn how to draw a slightly turned face as well.  The proportions are different when at an angle.  So much left to learn!  And according to Malcolm Gladwell, 10,000 hours of practice are ahead of me.

-christina