Improving faces and anatomy

[Guardian1]

Not really sure how this works since I am new here but I will be taking any constructive criticism. If you have any tips on what training you did to get better at drawing antomy or the head I am all ears. But anyone can post here. I am not sure if I am doing this right....

[JosephCow]

Hi, welcome to the forum! You can post anything you want, but I'd maybe post something like this in General Help section, or Critique section. You can start your own sketchbook thread and post whatever you're working on there for people to comment on as well.

To offer some suggestion to the head problem, I would focus mostly on big stuff before worrying about specific anatomy, to be honest. Like practice drawing a simple head construction at different angles, like the Loomis head. and learn the basic measurements, like that the distance between hairline to brow, brow to bottom of nose, and nose to chin are usually nearly exactly the same. Then when drawing a portrait you can start with those basics and modify them slightly to match the specific model. That kind of stuff is more boring than studying the features, but makes a way bigger difference to the end result than anything else in my experience.

The heads/portraits I've done that were the crappiest were the ones where the head is generally too long, or too short. Just the overall shape or proportion is a little off. Generally it's not really the anatomy that looks bad. Generally the same with doing the body. Like there's tons of resources to learn the names of the muscles and where they insert and stuff. But the major proportions, gesture, and sense of volume is what's gonna make it look good.