You can quickly change the look and feel of your characters by changing the facial features. If you are worried about creating abstract Picasso style faces, don’t worry! Faces are easy to customize and we have a tutorial showing you how here – Draw Your Own Faces Tutorial.

I thought long and hard when putting together the idea for DYO Clipart as to whether to include faces or not – in fact, the first drafts I put together were without faces. This is because I wanted DYO Clipart to form the basis for your own characters and not simply be a way to replicate the same character.

I decided to add the faces to the templates as I know one of the challenges when starting out drawing people is knowing where to add the facial features to get the look you want. While artists will know the ‘rules’ for knowing what goes where in order to create a face, the whole reason behind DYO Clipart is to make it easy for non artists to be able to draw characters without having to learn a lot of art theory.

Create Your Own Style

However, just because I’ve added faces, doesn’t mean that you have to use them – in fact, I urge you not to so you create your own style.

Use the faces as a guide, but instead of tracing the eyes or mouth exactly as the template, try tweaking them to create your own style. Create the new faces on different layers and see what works best for you.

There are many different styles from comic book, to simple dots through to colorful anime style features.

In the image above, the boy on the right has features from the template and the other three have got facial features I drew freehand. The little girl on the left is from the same template, however I rotated her arm. Learn how to do that here – how to rotate elements.

Tips for Creating Your Own Style

• Think of the styles you personally enjoy and the style which compliments your resources. Do a Google Image search for ‘girl student illustrations’ or ‘boy student illustrations’ and look for the different face styles which you like. Tip: Start a secret Pinterest board to save your inspiration images to.
• Try making the features super simple, with just two dots for the eyes and a small curve for the mouth. You can then build on this as you like with little highlights for the eyes or a pink gradient for the cheeks.
• Experiment with the placing of key features such as the eyes. A very different look and feel is got when the eyes are close together to when they are far apart.
• Remember the eyebrows! However simple you make the face, always try to add eyebrows as they give character to the face. Try raising one eyebrow and see what effect it has.
• Practice with several different faces. Just create a new layer and try a new face.

The key thing is to have fun while you are creating and enjoy developing your own characters.