Drawing a Realistic Caput: Bringing Faces to Life

While capturing a likeness tin can exist a challenge, heads and faces are some of the trickiest things to draw.

Let's focus specifically on drawing better facial features and a realistic head. Because we spend all mean solar day looking at people, nosotros are very aware when something is a little off in a portrait drawing or painting.

Stages of Drawing a Head

Here are useful tips to continue in mind as you do drawing a caput.

1. Know your proportions

Heads are non perfect circles, and they are non perfect ovals either. You can think of them as kind of egg-shaped, with the tapered end toward the bottom. Of course, this varies depending on the actual person and the bending you are seeing them from. But permit's kickoff with an egg…

draw a head

2. Refine the jawline

If you are drawing a adult female, this egg shape might practise well to describe her jawline, merely let'due south say we're drawing a man with a slightly more angular jaw and flatter chin. Let's bring the jawline out.

jawline

iii. Where to identify the optics?

Well, we accept a tendency to call back the eyes are closer to the summit of the head than the lesser because they are the highest facial characteristic. But that'southward not really the instance.

add eyes

As you tin come across, the eyes are just about halfway between the bottom of the jaw and the top of the head. There is a lot of caput above the eyes, as any of united states of america with a receding hairline know. But I skipped a step hither — how far apart should the optics be? How big should they be?

iv. A skillful rule of thumb is that the head is near five eyes wide

That ways the gap betwixt the eyes where the bridge of the nose is located is about the same width as the face up on either side of the eyes. Similar any rule of thumb, it's important to remember this isn't always the case, and that this applies but to drawing the confront head-on in a portrait.

wide eyes

v. Now let'southward place the ears

Locate the tops merely above the eyes, and bring them down to a bespeak almost halfway from the optics to the bottom of the jaw. Depending on the person, the ears can stick out a lot or a little, so there'due south non a expert dominion for that other than conscientious observation.

Well, what do you know — after cartoon the ears, you now accept a keen idea nigh where to locate the nose!

ears

half-dozen. Add the nose

Noses do vary quite a bit in width, and so keep that in listen. The sides of this guy'south nose extend a picayune past the inside corners of his eyes.

nose

seven. The mouth is a bit trickier

Rather than the oral cavity itself being halfway from the earlobes to the jawline, use that halfway point for the bottom lip. The width of the corners of the mouth oft extends to about the location of the iris in the eyes above.

mouth

8. Eyebrow placement

This is some other feature that varies greatly from person to person. Do keep in mind that each eyebrow is more often than not wider than the eye below it. They besides tend to be thickest toward the bridge of the olfactory organ and taper toward the sides of the face, where they often too sweep downward.

eyebrows

nine. Don't make the fault of placing the hair on the very meridian of the caput!

The hairline is typically about a quarter to a third of the way from the meridian of the caput to the eyebrows. Or in Sir Patrick Stewart'south case, behind the top of the head.

hair

These proportions work just every bit hands for a woman. Conform the jawline to be a piffling more than rounded, brand the ears a bit smaller and the cervix a little narrower and you accept a pretty convincing female face.

face

The other cool thing about knowing your proportions is you lot tin can use them to describe a head in profile, too! Just extend your proportion lines across and y'all accept a bang-up way to continue your head proportions consistent.

drawing heads