How to draw different nose shapes
Archive of Fine Arts
Most names for nose shapes point at one thing you can measure: long and broad at length against width from the front, upturned and down-pointing at how steeply the underside climbs to the tip in profile, straight, Roman and concave at the bridge line, projecting at how far the tip stands out. This guide measures each on ten drawn heads, so you can change one on purpose. Four shapes aren't on these plates: all ten bridges are straight, so none is Roman or concave, no tip points down, and the ball of the tip wasn't measured, so bulbous isn't either. Those sections say where the plates stop.
The heads are the ten bald heads in the free head rotation reference, front and profile pencil plates. The numbers come from our measurements for the nose from the front, the nose from the side, nostrils and face width proportions. Distances are compared nose to nose; from the front, the widest nose is about a quarter wider than the narrowest. These are one artist's drawings with neutral faces, so the numbers show the range of these ten, not of real faces.
Start from one nose
Take the middle value of each measure: a nose about a sixth longer than wide from the front. In profile, its bridge is straight and leans about 30 degrees from vertical, the tip stands about six tenths of the nose's length in front of the wing, and the underside climbs to the tip at about 39 degrees. The nose from the front and the nose from the side build it step by step, and the heavy-brow head comes closest on all four. Draw that first, then move one thing.
Long and broad noses: length against width
From the front, measure from the line through the inner eye corners to the base of the nose, the line under the tip. That length is about seven eighths to one and a quarter times the nose's width, and the heads fall into two groups, with a small gap between the roughly square noses and the long ones:
- Long, about a sixth to a quarter longer than wide: deep-folds, gaunt-planes, heavy-brow, minimal, soft-planes and square-jaw, in no order. They sit too close together to rank; the minimal head is nearest the other group.
- About square or broad, from about an eighth shorter than wide to a sixteenth longer: heavy-jaw, full-lips, hard-plane and high-cheekbones. Only the high-cheekbones nose is wider than long, by about an eighth.
What makes the four broad is mostly length. All four are shorter than any of the long six. Only the high-cheekbones nose is also much wider, about a seventh wider than most of the others, and the soft-planes nose is the narrowest; the heavy-jaw nose is an ordinary width among these heads. Part of the hard-plane nose's shortness may be the view, because that front is seen slightly from below.
In profile, the high-cheekbones and gaunt-planes noses are the two ends of length from the dip at the top of the bridge to the tip; the gaunt-planes nose is about half again as long.
To draw either, hang a box from the eye line as wide as the nose, with the base of the nose on its bottom edge: a sixth to a quarter taller than wide for a long nose, about square for a broad one.
Upturned and down-pointing noses: the underside
An upturned nose turns its tip up; a down-pointing one turns it down. In profile, take the line from the base of the nose to the tip, with the tip at the middle of its straight front run. It climbs on every head, and how steeply sorts the ten into three groups:
- Steepest: high-cheekbones 49 degrees, full-lips and deep-folds 45 to 47.
- Middle: soft-planes, heavy-brow, hard-plane, minimal and square-jaw, 37 to 39.
- Flattest: heavy-jaw and gaunt-planes, about 29.
None points down: the base of the nose sits a sixth to a third of the nose's length below the tip on every head. A down-pointing nose would need an underside flatter than 29 degrees, level or falling; these plates don't show one, so check that against a photo. On a nose like these, a level underside is a mistake, as the nose from the side says.
The angle depends on where you put the tip. At the top of its front run instead, most heads read 4 to 6 degrees steeper, the gaunt-planes head no steeper and the heavy-brow head 9, which puts it between the middle and steep groups.
We also measured the angle between the underside and the upper lip, 105 to 129 degrees, but it carries the lip as well as the tip. The full-lips head has one of the steepest undersides, yet its angle is only 109, because its upper lip leans forward about 28 degrees (worked out from the two angles), the most here, with the hard-plane head next at about 22; the square-jaw head has the widest angle with a middle underside, because its lip runs nearly straight down. So read the tip from the underside alone.
From the front, the line under the tip sits about a tenth to an eighth of the nose's width below the middle of the nostrils on the three steepest heads and about a sixth on the two flattest. The five middle heads run from about a ninth to a sixth, so the front view separates only the ends.
Straight, Roman and concave bridges
A Roman or hooked nose bows the bridge forward into a hump; a concave or ski-slope nose dips it back. On all ten heads the outline stays close to a straight line fitted to the middle of the bridge, with only small departures from it. We don't have a size at which a bow counts as Roman, so we call these straight, not tested against one. They differ in lean, from about 25 degrees off vertical on the gaunt-planes and heavy-jaw heads to 33 or 34 on four others.
To draw a Roman or concave nose, keep the dip and the tip where they are and bow the line between them out or in, checked against a photo.
Projecting noses
In profile, the tip stands in front of the back of the wing by just over half to nearly two thirds of the nose's length, the dip to the tip. Only the ends are clear: the square-jaw tip stands out furthest, nearly two thirds of that length, and the minimal and gaunt-planes tips least, both just over half.
That's against the nose's own length. Measured on the page, the short high-cheekbones and full-lips noses stand out least, and the long gaunt-planes nose about as far as the square-jaw one, about a fifth further than those two. A short nose can project a lot for its length and still sit close to the face.
Bulbous and button tips
A bulbous or button nose is about the size and roundness of the ball of the tip, which we didn't measure, so we don't sort these ten by it. From the front, two strokes six tenths of the way down, which we read as the sides of the ball, sit a little over two fifths to about half the nose's width apart where both show, on eight heads. We'd start a bulbous tip by widening that pair, but that's our reading, not a measurement.
Common mistakes
- Making a broad nose only by spreading the wings; here all four broad noses are short, and only one is much wider.
- Judging an upturned tip by the angle to the upper lip, which moves with the lip.
- Drawing an upturned nose with a level underside; even the flattest here climbs about 29 degrees.
- Letting a straight bridge sag or bulge; by eye these bend only at the dip and the tip.
A short exercise
Open the gaunt-planes and high-cheekbones heads from the front and in profile. Draw each nose from the front in its box, a quarter taller than wide for the gaunt-planes nose and a little wider than tall for the high-cheekbones nose, then in profile with undersides of about 29 and 49 degrees. Last, give the gaunt-planes nose the steep underside and compare.
What these numbers don't cover
The noses were read from the front and in profile only. Four profiles are drawn a little chin-up, which we turned level before measuring angles. All ten heads are bald with neutral faces. The nose from different angles and the nose in three-quarter view turn the shape between the two views.
The gaunt-planes head is Study Pack 02, in Volume 1, and the high-cheekbones head is Study Pack 09, in Volume 2.
This guide is one step in how to draw the head at any angle, which puts all the head guides in order.