How to draw the head in three-quarter view from below

Seen from below, the head follows two rules that pull against each other. From the front, the ears drop against the features, as how to draw a face looking up measures. In profile, they rise, as the measured section of how to draw the head from below shows. A three-quarter view sits halfway between, and we measured which rule wins there, from 20 degrees below. The numbers hold for that angle only.

The two heads

The plates come from our head from below reference. Two study heads, the heavy-jaw head and the minimal head, are drawn turned 45 degrees at eye level and again from 20 degrees below. The reference labels them as seen from 20 degrees below, a viewer lower down, not a head tipped back. For a head that tips back, see how to draw a tilted head.

The ruler is the head's width on the page, from the back of the skull to the front of the brow. Moving the viewer straight down doesn't move anything sideways, so this width should stay the same, and it does: it matches on both heavy-jaw plates and stays within 2 percent on the minimal head. Every distance below is a share of that width, a different ruler from the sibling guides, so compare percentages with them, not raw numbers. A change smaller than about 3 percent of that width could be reading error.

We measured vertical distances between the near eye, the ear, the base of the nose and the chin. The far eye sits partly behind the bridge of the nose on the plates from below, so we used the inner corner of the near eye, where the lids meet by the tear duct, as the eye line.

The ear stays near the eye line

At eye level, the top of the ear is almost exactly level with the inner corner of the near eye on both heads. From below it stays close: a twentieth of the head's width below the eye on the heavy-jaw head, just below it on the minimal head. Against the eye it drops only a little, about the size of our reading error.

At eye level, the bottom of the lobe ends about a tenth of the head's width below the base of the nose on the heavy-jaw head and under a twentieth below on the minimal head. From below, those gaps grow to about a seventh and a tenth of the width. Most of that comes from the nose moving up, below; against the eye the lobe barely moves.

So neither rule wins. In profile the ear rises against the eye, from the front it drops, and at 45 degrees it stays close to where it was. Keep the top of the ear on the eye line, as you would at eye level.

The crown gets shorter, the face barely changes

From the inner corner of the near eye down to the base of the nose:

• The heavy-jaw head goes from a little over a fifth of the head's width to a little under.
• The minimal head goes from nearly a quarter of the head's width to a fifth.

Those small changes are near our reading error, but both heads shorten, as the nose does from the front. In profile from below the same distance gets about 40 percent longer. The underside of the nose turns toward you, so its nostrils open.

From the base of the nose to the chin, the distance holds within that error: about two fifths of the head's width on the heavy-jaw head, a little under two fifths on the minimal head. We read the chin at the lowest point of the jaw's edge in front of the throat.

The big change is above the eye. From the top of the skull to the inner corner of the eye, the heavy-jaw and minimal heads shrink from a little over half the width to a little over two fifths, about a quarter shorter. The top of the skull tips away from you, so it's the crown that gets short, not the face. The whole head, top to chin, is 15 and 14 percent shorter than at eye level. That's more than the 6 percent a 20 degree change of view would give on its own, so part of it is how these plates were drawn.

The underside of the jaw is a band

At eye level we read the jaw as a single line on both heads. From below, a shaded band opens between the jaw's edge and the outline under it, and the plates cross-hatch it. We measured its height at three points over the last stretch before the chin, about a seventh of the head's width:

1. Nearest the throat, the band is about a tenth of the head's width tall on the heavy-jaw head and a twelfth on the minimal head.
2. Partway to the chin, about a twelfth and a twentieth of the width.
3. At the chin, a twentieth of the width on the heavy-jaw head and almost nothing on the minimal head.

So the band narrows to almost nothing at the chin. Behind that it carries on to the near jaw corner, under the ear, but the neck crosses it there and we didn't measure it; copy that part from the plates.

Drawing it

1. Draw the head at 45 degrees as you would at eye level, then shorten the cranium above the eye line by about a quarter, keeping the width.
2. Put the top of the ear on the eye line.
3. Shorten the nose a little, if at all, and open its underside. Keep the distance from the nose to the chin.
4. Curve the eye line and the line under the nose as arches, as the head from below shows; we didn't measure the curve at 45 degrees.
5. Draw a second line under the jaw that meets the jaw line at the chin, and shade the band between them as one plane, following the plates behind the throat.
6. Run the front of the neck up into that band, as on the plates.

Then compare with the plates. Three-quarter face proportions gives the eye-level spacing to start from, and how to draw the head in three-quarter view the construction.

Limits

Two drawn heads, one turn and one angle from below. The plates from below are drawn in a different hand from the level ones, so part of any change may be the drawing, not the view. A head tipping back at 45 degrees isn't the same movement as a viewer moving down; we didn't measure that, nor the far eye, how far the construction lines curve, or the lips. The numbers describe these drawings, not people's heads, so use them to check a drawing.

This guide is one step in how to draw the head at any angle, which puts all the head guides in order.