Making Faces

This is my step-by-step method for making faces on wooden beads.  The beads shown measure half an inch.  Put the bead on a pipe cleaner to make it easier to handle.  Being that they are made of wood, if you look at it, you will see the woodgrain appears as concentric circles.  These circles will aid in your placement of the features.  Imagining an equator on the bead gives you another guideline.  I use pigma micron pens to draw the face.  First the eyes:  Just above the imaginary equator line make dots for the eyes.  You will see that the concentric circles aid in spacing the eyes. Enlarge the dots a little bit at a time taking care to make them match.  Add eyebrows with a brown pen, one stroke for each starting at the inner eye for each one.  The nose starts on the equator line.  It is a 45 degree angle, again, made with one stroke.  With a red pen make a tiny arc for the mouth.  A pink prismacolor pencil adds a hint of a blush.  Simple as that!

As an added bonus, I will now reveal a mystery of life.  Ever have a pencil (particularly a colored pencil) break, you sharpen it, it immediately breaks again and you sharpen it again, it breaks again... ?  Well, what is probably happening is that sometimes in the pencil's life, it has been dropped or has fallen off a table and the lead in the pencil has broken inside the pencil. Now you know.

Comments

[Susan in SC]

Great tutorial on making faces on those wooden beads. Why hadn't I ever thought of a pipe cleaner!