How to Make a Couple Drawing?
Couple drawing is a perfect artistic practice for developing your observation and reproduction skills, and thus improving your overall stroke. Respect for proportions, use of perspective, colorimetry rules… Drawing a couple of lovers will allow you to work simultaneously on all the basic drawing techniques.
Here are some useful tips and tricks to help you make a couple drawing lovingly kissing.
Learning to Draw a Couple of Lovers
Learning couple drawing is done over time, proceeding step by step. Obviously, you won't become the new Leonardo da Vinci in five minutes, but with a little patience and lots of practice, your works will become more and more accomplished.
Don't hesitate to practice drawing different faces and silhouettes before embarking on your couple drawing. Practice, for example, from photos. This reproduction exercise is perfect for learning to respect human proportions, which is, without a doubt, the most delicate aspect in creating this type of drawing.
Note: it's entirely possible to learn drawing self-taught by relying, as here, on specialists' advice. There are notably different drawing manuals, as well as online tutorials offering character reproduction exercises. Tutorials adapted to beginners as well as more advanced illustrators. However, know that your drawing progress will always be longer self-taught than with the help of a teacher. Following a drawing course, delivered online or in person by an art school or private teacher, remains ideal for quickly deepening your drawing practice, and particularly couple drawing.
Choosing a Model for Your Couple Drawing
Drawing a couple from memory is a very difficult undertaking for beginners who don't yet have sufficient experience in character drawing. If you're only counting on your imagination, it's better to perfectly master drawing silhouettes and faces before getting started.
Also, if you're a beginner, it's better to rely on a model. Two choices are available here:
- you base yourself on live models who pose for you;
- you draw inspiration from a photo or drawing.
Whatever your choice, both will help you progress a lot.
However, unless you call on your friends' goodwill, if you want to make a couple drawing from live models, you'll very likely have to go through a drawing course.
Another option, you can perfectly draw inspiration from models encountered on the street. Sit on a terrace and observe the people around you. With a little luck, you'll discover a nice couple sitting at a nearby table, perfect for your sketches. However, there's little chance that your models of the day will hold the pose for several minutes in a row to allow you to draw them quietly. You'll instead have to go very fast to complete your drawing. This is therefore not the most indicated method for a beginner illustrator.
The easiest technique therefore remains to rely on one of your personal photos, or on an image found on the Internet.
Note: the magnificent photo "The Kiss at the Hôtel de Ville" by Robert Doisneau, is one of the images that have most inspired artists, both beginners and confirmed!
Photography has many advantages over live models:
- very accessible thanks to the web, you'll easily find the perfect inspiration photo;
- you'll then have all the time necessary to draw your couple of lovers in complete peace;
- you can also print the image to add markers that will help you respect proportions;
- etc.
Warning: a photo, even found on the Internet, is subject to copyright. If you copy one, never distribute it without the prior agreement of its author.
Creating a First Sketch of the Couple of Lovers
Once you've chosen your model, it's time to start your sketch.
This is preparatory work, necessary for all types of drawings, and not just couple drawing. Many beginner illustrators indeed make the mistake of dwelling on the details of their illustration from its beginnings. Unfortunately, there's little chance of obtaining a well-proportioned work in the end by working this way.
It's therefore better to start by sketching the contours of faces and bodies before dwelling on details.
Create a first sketch of your couple, being careful to stay light in your strokes. Thus place all the basic elements of the drawing while being careful to respect their proportions. To draw a couple who are kissing, proceed as follows:
- draw two touching circles to symbolize the placement of the skulls;
- form the jaws using trapezoids (the whole, circles and trapezoids, then forms a kind of heart);
- sketch the bodies if you want to draw your couple full-length, or just trace the neck lines of the characters if you only want to draw the heads.
The geometric shapes thus sketched allow you to properly place the first elements of the drawing, and serve as guidelines and reference points for the rest of the creation.
Complete your preparatory sketch by adding horizontal and vertical lines that will symbolize:
- the axis of the heads;
- the hairline;
- that of eyebrows and eyes;
- the bottom of the nose;
- the chin;
- and the mouth.
If you're producing a drawing of a couple represented from head to toe, note that the height of an adult's body is equal (generally) to seven or eight times their head. You'll therefore need to respect these proportions to create a realistic couple drawing. On the other hand, if your goal is to create a caricature, your characters' heads should be represented much larger than the body.
TIPS
To help you properly proportion the faces and bodies of your lovers, start your sketch directly on the inspiration photo (after printing it). This way, you'll much more easily realize the proportions of your protagonists before reproducing them on free paper.
Another tip, draw a grid on the model image, then reproduce it on your drawing sheet. You can thus sketch your subjects while precisely respecting the placement of each element composing their heads, faces, and bodies.
Detailing the Couple Drawing from the Sketch
Once your sketch is complete, you can dwell on the details of your couple drawing.
From the sketch lines, place the eyebrows, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth on your characters' faces.
- Always place the eyebrows first, to use as a reference for correctly placing and proportioning your eyes.
- Beginner illustrators tend to place their subject's eyes very high. In reality, they should be positioned at the center of the face. The ears themselves are placed in the extension of the eyes, on the same line as them.
- Know that, generally speaking, the distance between the two eyes equals the size of a single eye.
- Also note that the corners of a human's mouth are often aligned with the middle of their eyes.
Once the details of the faces are specified, attack the drawing of your characters' hair. You can then go even further into detail by drawing their clothes and accessories (earrings, tattoos, bracelets, etc.)
To go further, consult our tutorial: "How to Make a Portrait Drawing from a Photo"
Inking the Couple of Lovers Drawing
Once the detailed sketch is finished, you can move on to inking your couple drawing.
- For a graphite drawing, nuanced in gray, like a professional custom pencil portrait, continue to progressively detail your sketch with pencil, adding shadow and light areas.
- For a color drawing, the possibilities are endless: colored pencils, gouache, watercolor, markers, pastels, oil painting…
You can also clean up your drawing by going over its contours with India ink. You then just need to erase your sketch lines. If you want to remove all traces of pencil, copy your drawing by transparency using, for example, a light table.
Conclusion
Making a couple drawing takes time and practice. With a little patience and diligence, you'll be perfectly able to create a very beautiful drawing.
Offering a portrait made from a photo of your couple, such as a royal couple portrait, or that of your loved ones, is by the way an excellent gift idea for a wedding, meeting anniversary, Valentine's Day, etc.
In this case, if you're a beginner in drawing practice, it's better however to call on the stroke of a talented artist.
Go to Cartoonely, and entrust us with your couple drawing project. A specialist will take charge of creating the illustrated portrait, always in respect of your instructions.