How do you draw eyes and/or heads?

[axeman61]

Although the human head is the only thing I'm any good at after 3 years of on and off drawing, I still can't get it right. I'm asking people here how they personally draw heads and/or eyes.
I use an egg shape which I flesh out, and for eyes, my current 'method' is to draw light circles where the eyeballs would be and draw the eyelids accordingly.
As I said before, it's still not very good. I'm hoping I can absorb something from learning how you guys do it. Maybe I can provide scans if you want to highlight my problems. Perhaps the problem is that I try to do everything from memory.

[jetpack42]

show us what you got.

great artists who have come before you have solved the problems of drawing already. drawing from them will teach you how they worked, and another way to solve the problem.

drawing from life will exercise you in observing, and solving the problems for yourself.

drawing from memory will show you how much you have learned.

look at other artists and draw from life in addition to just noodling heads from memory.

[Brutillus]

great advice, jetpack.
I personally am finding that Loomis's flattened ball with face plane works well.
just getting to know the basic structures underlying the face (cheekbones, eye socket shape, etc.) really helps. before l started learning these I just relied on memory of faces and drew them as a flat image.
as jetpack said, drawing from life is a great and even just observing the structures of faces in life and photographs everywhere helps.
good luck

[axeman61]

For the moment jetpack, I can't really show what I've got. I don't know exactly how to operate the new scanner, and I haven't even ironed out my problems beyond vague descriptions like 'I can't draw noses well."

You say draw from life, and that's good, but I want to know how you guys personally construct a head with shapes assuming you even go through that stage. I'm trying to do this method (http://www.scottmcdaniel.net/drawing/drawexer/lifestudies.html) without the tracing paper because I think I'll learn more from it. I just want to again know how you guys construct a head or possibly even a body if we're following that method. Are you loose with the construction head/figure? Do you know what you're going to do in advance? I'm just trying to soak up info.