How to draw the neck

A head drawn on a straight, upright neck looks stiff even when the face is right. The neck is a cylinder that leans forward out of the shoulders, with the head resting on its top end. Get the lean and the width right, place two muscles, and the head sits on the body instead of floating above it.

The plates here are two study busts, each one head, neck and shoulders drawn from a single model; the lean and widths in the next sections were measured on the models.

Lean the cylinder forward

On these two models the axis of the neck leans 27 and 30 degrees forward of vertical. In profile this means the front of the neck runs down and back from under the jaw to the pit between the collarbones, and the back of the neck runs down and back from the base of the skull into the shoulders.

The base of the cylinder is a slanted ring: it sits higher at the back, where the neck meets the shoulders, and lower at the front, at the pit of the neck. Draw that ring on a slant first, then a second ring under the jaw further forward, and join them.

How wide the neck is

The neck is narrowest just under the jaw. On these busts that width is a little over half and about two thirds of the width of the ball you draw for the cranium, so a neck drawn as wide as the jaw is usually too thick, and one drawn as a thin stem under a large skull is too narrow. Measure it against the ball before you draw the outline.

Two muscles show on every neck

The sternomastoid runs from just behind the ear down and forward to the pit of the neck, where the collarbones meet. There is one on each side, so from the front they make a V that ends in the pit. On a turned head, place the near one first: it runs at a slant across the cylinder.

The trapezius runs from the base of the skull out to the tip of each shoulder. It is what turns the back of the neck into the slope of the shoulders, and it gives the neck its broad base when you see it from behind.

The collarbones

The collarbones start at the pit of the neck and run out to the shoulder tips. Draw them as two light lines. They anchor the bottom of the sternomastoid and tell you where the shoulders are, so place them before you shade anything.

A thicker neck

The second bust has the thicker neck of the two, about two thirds of the ball's width against a little over half, and leans 30 degrees against 27. The construction does not change: the same cylinder, the same slanted ring at the base, the same two muscles. Only the width and the lean move.

Measured on ten drawn heads

Two busts are only two models, so we measured the neck on the ten bald heads of our head turntable as well, straight from the front and in profile. The unit is the skull width: the skull at its widest, seen from behind, as in the back of the head. The busts were measured against the cranium ball instead, so don't compare the two sets of numbers directly.

From the front, the sides of the neck run almost parallel for a stretch about level with the chin, and there the neck is about five eighths to a little over five sixths of a skull width across, about seven tenths on a typical head. From behind it measures almost the same on all ten, though partly by construction: the back plates are the front outline turned around. Draw the outermost line as the edge. The darker strokes just inside it, running toward the pit of the neck, look like the sternomastoids; we didn't measure them.

In profile, three marks set the neck:

1. The throat corner. The line under the jaw runs back from the chin and turns down on the row of the chin, at most a twentieth of a skull width under it. Measured from the nape forward, the corner sits about three quarters of the way to the front of the chin.
2. The nape. The back outline is at its most inward between the row of the earlobe and the row of the chin, from about level with the lobe to a little over a third of a skull width below it, on six of the ten less than halfway down. On none of the ten is it below the chin.
3. The depth. Level with the throat corner, the neck is about seven tenths to nearly a full skull width deep, about four fifths on a typical head. That is about a tenth to a little over a quarter more than its narrowest width from the front, about a sixth more on a typical head, so on these ten the neck is deeper than it is wide. Part of that is the lean, since a level cut across a leaning neck is longer than its true thickness. Still, a neck drawn as deep in profile as it is wide from the front comes out too thin.

Below the nape the back edge leans 6 to 24 degrees forward of vertical, about 15, and the throat leans more, 18 to 40 degrees, about 27. Together that is about 21 degrees, 16 to 32 across the ten, less than the busts' 27 and 30 on eight of them. These plates stop above the shoulders, so only the upper neck was measured.

The heads are drawn plates in one style, read as drawn, with no hair, and three are drawn tipped a little chin-up, which moves the chin and throat. The nape hollow is a shallow curve, so its row is a band, not a point. The numbers describe these drawings, not people's necks, so check them against your own reference.

A quick exercise

1. Draw a head in profile, then a cylinder under it leaning 20 to 30 degrees forward.
2. Make the bottom ring of the cylinder slant: high at the back, low at the front.
3. Check the narrowest width under the jaw: a little over half to two thirds of the cranium ball on the busts, about seven tenths of a skull width on the ten heads.
4. In profile, turn the throat down on the chin row, set the nape between the lobe and the chin, and make the neck about four fifths of a skull width deep.
5. Draw the sternomastoid from behind the ear to the pit of the neck.
6. Run the trapezius from the base of the skull out to the shoulder.
7. Add the collarbones from the pit out to the shoulder tips.

Then draw the same bust at three quarters and from the front. The head from below guide shows the underside of the jaw and the throat when the head tips back, and the back of the head builds the neck from behind.

These busts, with the measured neck lines drawn over them, are plate 29 of How to Draw the Head, the 43-page book included with Volume 1 and Volume 2.

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