There's no one right way to draw a face. Here are 28 ways artists on Magma drew theirs, and how you can learn from them.
In "face & expression studies!", a public study jam on Magma that 95 artists joined, artists drew the same laughing, winking face from one reference photo, each in their own frame. Some kept it to a few clean lines, some blocked in flat color over construction lines, some painted every highlight on the skin. The painted one at the top (#8) is one of them.
Open the canvasWork from a reference and look for light and shadow, not outlines. These artists painted the planes of the face: where the light hits the forehead, cheek and nose, and where it turns away.
In the laughing study (#8) the winking eye is squeezed shut and the cheek below it is pushed up. The mouth is wide open, showing the top teeth and the tongue, and the head tilts with it. The artist's own caption: "lil rusty w studies but this was fun".
In (#41) the face floats in water with the eyes closed. Only the forehead, eyelids, nose and lips break the surface, and rings of ripples spread around them.
#8
Keep the proportions of a real face and change the rest: the colors, the brushwork or the shapes. The face still reads because the eyes, nose and mouth are in the right places.
"Egg Theory" (#48) paints a face straight onto an egg: light on top, shadow wrapping around the lower side. The artist's own caption: "the head has a basic egg shape, therefore you must also shade it like an egg!"
The face in (#50) is painted in greens on a deep red background, with dark red lips. The shadows under the brows and cheekbones are still where they would be on a real face.
Simplify: big eyes, a small nose and mouth, and clean shapes. In anime and cartoon faces, the expression does most of the work.
The expression study (#64) draws the same character four times. Only the eyes, brows and mouth change: an open grin, a grimace with one eye shut, a wince, and a pout with one cheek puffed out.
In "Many Faces" (#39) every head uses the same four colors, shown as a swatch at the top. Skin, hair and shadow are just flat shapes, and each face is still different.
#64Page after page of quick heads is how most artists learn faces. Block in the shapes, check the placement, then sharpen the lines.
Along the bottom of (#85) the same head is drawn in steps, labelled by the artist: eye, brow and chin first, then placement, then sharper lines.
The study page (#77) has ball-and-plane heads next to the finished sketches, and the artist's own reminders: the skull doesn't extend past the ear, and hair volume plays tricks on you.
From our tutorial on the Magma blog. Anime faces depend on proportions, so both views start from circles and guide lines on their own layer, which you hide at the end.
The fastest way to get better at faces is to draw them next to other people. 5 of the 28 drawings on this page were made in Art Jams: shared canvases where everyone draws at the same time.
Join a face or portrait jam, watch how others place the features and handle light, and ask them how they did it. Or host a study jam like "face & expression studies!": add a reference, give everyone a frame, and compare what each person makes of it.
No face jam is live at the moment. Browse the open Art Jams, or start your own and share the link.
The basic shapes behind a face seen from the front. Once they're down, pick a way from above and make it yours.
Counts from Magma's public Art Jams and posts, September 2026.
Open a free canvas in your browser. Nothing to install, and it works on Chromebooks too. Post it when you're done, and it could end up on this page.
Draw a face nowThere's no single right way. Start with simple shapes (an egg for the head, a line halfway down for the eyes, the nose and mouth below), then pick a style: realistic, stylized, anime or quick studies. The easiest way to improve is to draw alongside others in a face or portrait Art Jam and see how they do it.
Keep the same egg and guidelines, then make the eyes much bigger, the nose a small mark and the mouth a short line or a simple open shape. Let the eyes and brows carry the expression, like the expression study on this page.
Change the eyes, brows and mouth together, and let the rest of the face follow: a laugh pushes the cheeks up and narrows the eyes. Drawing one character with several expressions, or one expression from a reference, is good practice.
Draw it on Magma and post it to your public feed. We pick drawings for this page from public posts, and every one is credited to its artist.
Draw a face now
Draw a face now
