Ryan Maloney shows how to draw characters with personality by treating facial features like musical notes. He starts with solid structure, then experiments with different nose shapes and expressions to find the right combination that makes a character feel distinctive and original.
Chapters
Let's draw characters with personality. What do I mean by personality? When I'm drawing, I try to make something unique, distinctive. Let's Google search distinctive. Distinguishable from others. Original, peculiar, singular. I like those words. Let's draw some structure. The more structure you have in your drawing, the easier it'll be to add personality. Structure in a drawing is just like structure in music. I'm really gonna mess up this music analogy, so stick with me. Think of each feature in the face as a musical note. Where you put that note and how you play that note is going to make up a different personality for each character. While I'm drawing this, I'm asking myself questions. What if this were like this? What if this were like that? Can I make the nose a little bit different than I did last time? I'm obsessed with watching musicians make beats in studios because it's all just experimenting until you find the right personality.