Not only drawing the face well, posing the face in certain angles can enhance the feel you want to express.

 

The characters here have the same expressions, they are looking at the same thing and the light source are the same. But because the angles of their head are different, there are slightly different impressions.

These characters, too. Looking down emphasizes the bashfulness, looking up emphasizes the happiness.

May your style be realism, anime, semi-realism, cartoon and so on, the same construction method and proportions can be applied.

There's a video version containing timelapse drawing of the methods. Watch it if you want to know how it's actually done live!

Proportions

Human head proportion is easy to remember.

 

There are three equal parts in blue that makes up the face and a smaller part at the top, about half of one blue part, that makes up the crown of the head like a small dome.

The hairline, bottom of the eyes and mouth are neatly placed right halfway of the respective blue parts.

This is realistic proportions, but tweaking the proportions to suit your style is easy once you tackle the realistic ones.

Loomis Method

Loomis method is widely known, but since the construction seems complicated many don’t get it right away. Like me!

 

Let’s construct faces in three most common angles from scratch in Loomis method to make it easier to digest.

 

1. Draw a circle freehand. No need to draw it perfectly. As long as it doesn’t look like an oval, it’s probably okay.

2. Split in half twice (horizontally and vertically), depending on the angle you want. In this case Front, 3/4 and Profile.

3. We need to add two more guidelines. Make a simple ruler, split the circle in three.

 

4. Then drag it down until the middle part touches the middle line. It’s okay to eyeball the measurements, too.

 

5. Draw two lines connecting the tops and the bottoms of the guide lines.

6. Since the sides of human’s head is kind of flat, chop the sides a bit.

7. In the middle of the pink part is where the lower part of the eye is (in realism) and the eyebrows would touch the line above.

 

The line at the bottom (with green arrows) here marks where the tip of the nose is.

8. The middle of the green part is where the hairline is.

9. The bottom half of the sides are where the ears are located. The top of the ear on the same line as the eyebrows and the bottom of the ear with the tip of the nose.

 

The part of the ear that connects to the head is lower than the tip, you can use the eyelashes as the guide. You can also pretend your character is wearing glasses. Voila!

10. Now time for the jaws. Remember that there are three equal parts for the face? Use the existing two parts as the measurement guide.

 

Both the mouth and the edge of the jaw are parallel to the bottom of the circle.

And the construction is done.

 

There are many steps, but it’s like riding a bike. Once you know how, you can do it without thinking.

Now, let’s put it intro practice and draw different angles. Different from before, we’re going to construct the whole face before drawing the eyes, nose and mouth.

 

1. Start with a circle, split in four.

2. Draw the top and bottom line.

3. Chop the sides.

4-5. From the intersection of the lines that split the circle in four, draw a straight line to mark where the chin is. (See step 10 from step-by-step before this)

 

There’s a tip on the next section to easily map the chin, we’ll just draw it for now.

6. Time to draw the eyes.

 

If you’re at loss on how to angle the eyes, use the same circle from step 1 and draw the eyes there.

 

When facing up (left most eye), the lower eyelid will curve up and cover a small part of the eyes. When facing down (two eyes on the right), the upper eyelid will curve down and cover a small part of the eyes.

Adjustment will be needed when applying it to the face, but it’s a good reference.

 

7. Draw the eyebrows on the line above the eyes.

8. Then the nose. I like to draw a small triangle first to mark where the tip of the nose will be, then draw the bridge.

 

9. Draw the nose according to the sketch.

 

The steps are zoomed in enough in the video if you want to see the process.

10. If you want to draw lips and at loss about the angle, use the circle again.

I made a How to Draw Mouth tutorial if you want to learn how:

Copy and paste the lips on the character. Adjust the size and position.

11. Then draw the outline of the face. When looking sideways, the part between the eyebrow and cheekbone is slightly curved inward.

12-13. The neck is on the middle part of the bottom of the sphere.

I don’t usually pay attention to the position. As long as it fits the head angle, no problem.

14-15. Add hairline and ears.

And done!

Loomis + Mask

I found drawing the jaw confusing. So here’s something I did.

 

Back to this step where we need to find the chin. We'll draw a mask to make finding the jaw easier.

One of the straight outlines of the mask is at the middle of the chopped part when it’s visible.

The other straight outline, or both in front view, will be based on chopped side of the sphere.

You can see that the mask was vertically split in three equal parts. We still map the face the same way like before.

1. For the outer part of the face, connect the edge of the middle line to the edge of the bottom line. Curve a bit to give volume.

2. There’s an angled part of the jaw. To find it, split the edge of the bottom section of the mask in two. That’s where the angled part is.

3. After drawing the angled part, connect to the chin. Then you can draw the rest of the face like before.

Mask Only Method

Another method is to draw the mask only for the face angle.

1. First draw a curved paper and split into three and in the middle. Then, map the face. The guidelines works the same way like previous methods.

2. After that, draw the cranium. Starting from eyebrow line, draw a circle that’s a bit taller than the top of the paper.

 

3. Drawing the face outline is exactly the same like previous method.

4. Draw the ears. I eyeballed the measurement, you can use “chopping” method from Loomis section if you want to be really sure.

 

5. Draw the jawline using the method from Loomis + Mask section.

6. And the rest of the face is drawn just like before. This sketch is enough, we can draw a character over it.

 

7. Here we go!

I quite like this method because there’s way less to prepare to draw.

 

There’s a lack of measurements though so depending on your skill level, the drawing might not be accurate.

Freehand Method

The last method is drawing without drawing the construction. In other words, you construct the head in your mind and draw it right away.

 

You can start with drawing one part of the face as the guideline. For the one on the right I draw the eye first, and the other one the head first.

There are some artists that can do it with ease, but they’re often god-tier artists.

 

I’m bad at this, I always make mistakes in the proportions. It takes so much brain power and prone to mistakes it’d be faster for me to just construct the head.

 

You can always try it out for a good challenge, though!

CSP 3D Model

There are four basic models available. And four anime styled ones.

The two on the right the most accurate head proportions, very useful for studying head.

The other models are deformed to some extend, better for stylized drawings.

Other than head studies, there are several features that might be useful. The first one is light source.

 

Facial structure is a bit complicated, even if you’ve learned anatomy. This feature works great as quick reference for lighting scenarios. You can also change the color of the light if you need it.

The second one is change body shape. Helps a ton when drawing characters in different weight.

The third one is angle preset. The angles available in preset are the most common angles you’ll draw over and over again as an artist.

 

They don’t have the looking up ones though, adjustment needed.

You can also look up head models in CSP Assets. There are lots of good ones,.

 

Or you can wait until CSP ver 2.0 release. There will be adjustable head model, which is awesome from what I’m seeing on the preview. You can see the preview of the upcoming features on Ver 2.0 page.

Back Angle

Some might find back angle a bit tricky. But there’s only one key to it, the ears.

 

Let’s take a look at these 3D models. The angles are different, but both have almost identical silhouette.

We can further confirm how similar it is by breaking it down to sphere and guidelines.

The difference lies in the position of the ears. The ears of the back view is positioned closer to the face than front view.

1. Draw the head with the Loomis steps. I don’t recommend mask method because it’s a bit tricky for this angle.

 

2. All that’s left is to omit the details you can’t see from the back like the eyes, nose, mouth and so on.

Chibi Head

The construction for chibi head is similar to the method we’ve learned. The ratio is a bit different though. The eyes are super big, while the nose, mouth and ears are tiny.

 

The jaw part for standard face is equal to the other two parts of the face, for chibi the chin part is only half as long. Fits nicely within the circle.

 

Hairline position is the same, though.

Like before, draw a circle, split in four, draw top and bottom lines, chop the sides. Then draw the face.

In previous examples, when the characters are looking up, the jaw line were drawn. But if you want to emphasize cuteness like in chibi character, it’s better to not draw it.

 

To enhance the cuteness, less is more. Jaw line is too much detail. Instead of drawing it with clear line, use shading.

That’s it for now! I hope you find the method that works for you.

 

See you later!