On paper, drawing the head isn’t too difficult, but if you only know how to draw a few head angles it’s very challenging to draw new ones because the face changes a lot depending on the angle.

In this tutorial, we’re going to learn a simpler, step by step way of drawing the head that will hopefully enable you to draw different head angles from imagination, as well as balance the face so that you can get the best results possible.

This tutorial is divided into 2 parts. In part 1 we are going to look at all the different shapes and parts of the head. In part 2 we are going to draw through 8 of the main face angles which are representative of every angle you should encounter.

The Box

When drawing the head and face it’s helpful to think of the head as if it were in a box, because it’s important to understand that the head as a 3D object and not a flat one.

So in some angles features like the ears and eyes aren’t going to line up in a straight line.

Guide lines and proportions

While drawing the head we are going to use two lines to help us know where to draw the rest of the head and face. They are the centerline and the eyeline. The centerline divides the front of the head in half, and the eyeline marks the the halfway point of the head vertically.

Almost every facial feature will line up somewhere on one of these two lines. Together, they will make a cross shape, and the direction that the cross is facing will be the direction the head is facing.

 

From the front view the lines will be crossing at the middle. As the face rotates left or right, the centerline will stay mostly the same length but the eyeline will grow shorter, and the centerline will move further to the side.

As the face looks further up or down, the centerline will grow shorter but the eyeline will mostly stay the same size. The eyeline will move further up to down though.

As the face moves toward a diagonal, such as up to the side, both lines will grow shorter, and the angle between the two will change.

Basic Shapes

There are 3 main shapes that make up the head. The Cranium, the jaw and cheeks, and the neck.

The cranium is drawn like a sphere and will make up most of the head. From the side it is going to slightly wider than it is from the front.

The neck is pretty much a cyllinder. It will attach to the head roughly in the middle from every angle, and will be about 1/3 the width of the head. The neck is slightly tilted forward, so it wont look straight except from the front.

The jaw and cheeks are the hardest shape to draw out of the 3 because it changes a lot depending on the face angle. Even though they are separate parts they are usually drawn together because In most angles you will only see half of the jaw, and the other side is going to covered by the cheek.

The jaw will start on both sides from the side of the head and lead to the chin. We draw it in two lines. The first will be shorter and go down slightly at an angle towards the center. The second line will continue at a curve and end at the chin.

Moving on, the cheek is basically bone and some muscles that will create a bulge underneath the eyes. You can think of it as a round shape on either side of the nose.

When drawing the cheek we will start at the eye, curving around the bulge of the cheek until we can continue the line down to the chin.

The cheek line and the jawline will always end at the centerline where the chin is. Note that both sides of the jaw and both cheeks will always be there, but depending on the head angle you might not draw it. Pay attention to if the jaw will be covered or not as you figure out how the jaw and cheeks will look in the angle you are drawing.

The Facial Features

I like to think of the face and head as separate parts because in order to draw the face you need to plan out the head first. By themselves each of the facial features can be extremely detailed and complex, so I’m only going to cover how to draw them very simply, focusing on how they will change in different angles.

The Ear

The ear is a very complex shape, so to make it easier we will simplify it down to a disk. Because the ear is relatively flat, it will appear wider the more sideways the head is looking, and thinner the closer the head angle is to the front view.

In more detail, the ear tends to be wider and more round at the top before narrowing at the bottom.

There are 3 main shapes that make up the details of the ear: one is shaped like a c around the top half, another is shaped like a y and takes up most of the middle, and the last is a little triangle sticking out where the ear attaches to the head.

We can simplify all this down to 3 lines, one for the c, one for the triangle, and the last for the y.

The Nose

The nose can be simplified to 3 main shapes. The main part is a triangular box, the second is a rounded sphere like shape at the bottom, and the last are round pyramid like shapes over the nostrils.

The key thing to pay attention to is how compared with the rest of the face the nose sticks out a lot, so the further the head is turned to the side the more the nose will be covering the farther eye and side of the face.

For this reason the most important part of the nose is a line running down the center. A lot of artists don’t draw the upper part of the line and just draw a line over the bulb, or bottom of the nose, but note that if the nose is covering anything you will need to draw the full line.

The Mouth

The mouth can be divided into 3 parts, the upper lip, lower lip, and the lines for the middle.

Both lips are shaped like half an oval, with a dip in the middle of the upper lip and a slight flattening in the middle of the lower lip.

Keep in mind that the mouth bulges forward, meaning that from side views you will have to draw it coming out and not flat on the face. Because the lips are separate they create an indent between them in the side view. You can follow this stair step pattern for the side.

The main part of the mouth we want to pay attention to is the middle. It is made up of a small angle in the middle from the upper lip, and two lines on its sides.

The mouth is usually simplified down to just these two lines, or one in the side view.

Eyes

Finally we get to the eyes. The eye is made of 3 main parts, the eye socket, the eyeball, and the eyelids. The eye socket is a large hole on each side of the face that contains the eyeball.

The lids sit over the eye and are divided into the upper and lower eyelid.

The most important takeaways from this structure are 1, that the head will form a slight indent where the eyes are because of the socket, and 2, because of how the eyelids cover the front of the eye, the eye will appear thinner from the side, and you will only see the eyebrow or eyelid from the extreme top or bottom angles.

With this in mind, we can simplify the eye to two lines for the lids and circle for the iris. The top line will be longer and thicker, the bottom will be smaller and is mostly for marking the bottom of the eye. In reality the iris will be a circle, but it’s ok to draw them as taller ovals.

When drawing them in other angles, the key to making the eyes look good is keeping the proportions equivalent. For most angles, this means making sure the eyes are the same height. You also need to make sure there is enough space between the eyes: there should roughly be an entire eye’s width between the 2 eyes.

Eyebrows

While we’re still talking about eye structure we’ll cover the eyebrows. They aren’t terribly complicated, as they’re pretty much just a thick line following the ridge created by the eye socket.

The eyebrows will go above the eyes, but the distance between the two is going to be dependent on the person and the facial expression.

In the next section we’re going to put all this knowledge to use, but first we’re going to talk a little about proportions. Good proportions bring the whole face together, so pay extra attention to this part.

As we learned earlier, the centerline and eyeline form the basis for the entire face, so we’ll start with them. Because of the jaw, the centerline will be slightly taller than the cranium, roughly 1/4-1/3 longer.

Also because of the jaw, the eyeline won’t be the halfway point of the ball. It will divide the entire head in half, which will usually be slightly below the halfway point of the ball.

From here we can place all the other facial features. We will take the bottom half of the face and divide it in half. The nose will end at this point, and the mouth sits almost halfway between the nose and chin.

The eyes and ears will both be on the eyeline. The eyes be drawn so that the eyeline runs through the middle of the eye, and there will be one eye’s width between them. Placing the eyes in the middle is more realistic, but depending on the style they can be drawn lower. You generally don’t want to make the top of the eyes lower than the eyeline though. The ear will start roughly in the middle of the side of the head. It will start on the same level as the eyeline, meaning that the top of the ear will peek above the eyeline.

Part 2: The 8 Main Angles

There are about 8 main angles that are representative of almost every angle you will ever draw. We are going to draw through each to give you an idea of what will you will have to pay attention to as you draw.

 

For any angle we’re going to roughly follow this order. We’ll start with a circle for the cranium, then draw the centerline, then the eyeline. I like to draw the ear, then draw the chin and cheek, and then the neck. You don’t need to follow any specific order for the face.

Front View

The front view the most simple, but not necessarily the easiest, as you need to make everything symmetrical. We’re going to start with the circle, if you can’t draw a perfect one I would use the ellipse tool. In clip studio you can make a perfect circle by using the ellipse tool while holding shift, then adjusting the size.

Then we’ll drawn the centerline, then eyeline, then the jawline. Note that the cheek won’t noticeably cover the chin in this angle so we’ll draw both sides of the jaw. The primary thing to be careful of is balancing the face because it will be symmetrical. You can also always duplicate the jaw. Otherwise you might have to draw multiple passes and erase.

The nose and mouth line up on the centerline, and the eyes will be the same size on the eyeline.

3/4 View

Next we’ll look at the 3/4 view. It’s halfway between the front and side view, so we’ll see both they front and side of the head. We’ll draw the centerline closer to the side, and the eyeline will not be as long compared to the front. Next we’ll draw the jawline at the approximate halfway point of the side, underneath the eye level. In this angle the cheek will be covering one side of the jaw, so make sure to draw around it. Next, we’ll draw the neck, but make sure it’s angled back a little.

The further eye will shrink a little, and the nose will come out a little above the centerline.

Side View

We’ll start with the cranium as usual, note that side of the cranium is slightly wider so make sure the circle isn’t taller than it is wide. We’ll draw the nose swooping out from the cranium, then coming back in. The mouth will make another 2 peaks because the lips are separate and they come out from the head slightly. The chin will come out a little as well. The jawline will start at the middle of the head and run to the chin. Remember that the nose will be halfway done to the chin, and the mouth will be halfway between the chin and nose. A helpful tip is that the mouth will be behind this line between the peak of the nose an chin. Besides that the eye and eyebrow will be thinner, and the ear will be wider compared to the front.

Looking up

When the head is looking up the entire face is going to appear shorter. Note that this is more noticeable in the further half of the face. The size and distance between the different parts is also going to decrease the further away each part is. The final major difference is that the jaw is going to flatten, then grow into a more noticeable v shape the more the head looks up.

We’ll draw the cranium, centerline, and eyeline. Then we’ll draw the jaw, making sure that it’s the right shape for the angle, in this case the v. Then the ears and neck, and then the rest of the face.

Looking down

The looking down angle is going to have a lot of similarities with the looking up one. When the head is looking down the bottom half is going to be flattened, making the features smaller and less spaced out.

The jaw is going to work differently, as it’s just going to get smaller until it gets covered by the other parts of the head.

We’ll draw all the usual parts, then we’ll draw the jaw making sure to make it shorter. Then we’ll draw the face, knowing that there won’t be much space in between each part.

Side looking up

This angle is a combination of the side and looking up angles, so it will contain parts of both. The head will be looking up, so we’ll see the underside of the chin. Because it’s turned to the side, we’ll draw a bulge for the cheek. The other changes are that the ears will not line up in a straight line with the eyes, and the nose will be raised in front of the centerline, and may be covering part of an eye.

Side looking down

This angle is also a combination, and like the last angle the primary differences are that the jaw is going to look different, and the ear isn’t going to line up with the eyes. The nose will move in front of the centerline the more sideways the head is looking.

Behind

From the back, we’ll start with the cranium, we’ll draw the centerline to help us draw the jaw, and the eyeline to help us with the ears. We’ll draw the jaw and neck as usual, but the neck will connect higher to the cranium, and we’ll erase this part because the neck is covering it. The only facial feature showing is the ear, so make sure you draw it thinner, but also add these two lines for the behind of the ear,

If you’re drawing the head from behind and it’s turned in any direction, just make sure you keep in mind where the jaw is, and note that the eye might be showing, but if it is it’s going to be a very thin and close to the edge of the head.

As a final note, every sideways angle can be repeated for the other side by flipping. Again, this is not a comprehensive list, but it should give you an idea of the details that change in each type of angle.

 

Hopefully you were able to learn something today, thank you for reading!