How to draw nostrils: size, spacing and shape

From the front, much of a nose is drawn at its base: the tip, the two wings and the nostrils under them. The nostrils are the darkest small shapes there, so a wrong size or spacing shows at once.

The heads come from the free head rotation reference. On the ten front pencil plates a script found each nostril: starting from its darkest pixel, it kept every touching pixel darker than a point 40% of the way from that pixel to the paper. We drew every result back on its plate to check it. Where a nostril trails off into a thin line, we cut the thin part off and measured the thick body. Nose widths, wing to wing, come from our face width measurements; the widest is about a quarter wider than the narrowest. We repeated every figure with a 50% cutoff; its ranges are given beside ours, and the two counts on which end thins rise by one or two with it. The numbers describe these drawings, not people's noses; use them as a starting point to check against your own reference.

Split the base of the nose into five

Measured across the base, as a share of the nose's width:

Each nostril, the thick body without its tail: a little over a tenth to about a fifth of the width, about a seventh on a typical head. With the 50% cutoff, about a tenth to a little over a quarter, typically a sixth.
The gap between them, from the inner end of one body to the inner end of the other: a third to a little under half the width, about three eighths on a typical head. With the 50% cutoff, a little over a quarter to a little under half, typically a third.
Nostril to wing, from the outer end of each nostril to the outline of the wing: about an eighth to a fifth of the width, about a sixth on a typical head. With the 50% cutoff, about a ninth to just under a fifth.

The middle values add up to the whole width: wing, nostril, a gap of a little over a third, nostril, wing. The gap is about two and a half nostril bodies wide; the tails, where a nostril has one, reach into it. Each body is also about two and a half times as wide as it is tall at its thickest (from about one and a half to nearly four times), so draw flat beans rather than round holes.

The thin end points to the tip

Where a nostril trails off into a thin line, the line leaves the inner end and runs on toward the underside of the tip: 11 of the 20 nostrils do this, and none trail off at the outer end. The outer end is the full, rounded one. Measured as thickness, the outer third is thicker than the inner third on 18 of the 20, though clearly so on only three.

The tilt varies more: on seven heads the nostrils rise slightly toward the outside and neither dips; on the heavy-jaw head both are level within the error; on the hard-plane and minimal heads both dip slightly toward the outside. So there's no fixed angle: follow the wing above each nostril.

The tip hangs below the nostrils

At the middle of the nose, the line under the tip sits about a tenth to a sixth of the nose's width below the center of the nostrils on all ten heads. The base of the nose is not a straight line through the nostrils; it dips between them.

How dark that line is varies: light on the hard-plane, heavy-jaw and full-lips heads (about two steps below the paper at its darkest, against six to seven for their nostrils), a mid grey on six heads (three to four steps) and nearly as dark as the nostrils on the minimal head.

How dark to draw them

Measured after a slight blur, each head's darkest nostril point is within half a step of the darkest point in its eyes, on all ten heads, both five to seven steps below the paper. The nostrils are darker than the mouth line on seven heads and level with it on the gaunt-planes head; on the minimal and high-cheekbones heads the mouth line is darker. So draw the nostrils as dark as the eyes, not as a light sketch.

The two nostrils don't have to match. On the soft-planes and square-jaw heads the nostril at the left of the plate is filled with a mid grey, about four steps below the paper at its darkest, beside a darker one about five steps down.

The soft-planes head from the front. The nostril at the left of the plate is filled lighter; the one at the right is darker and trails off toward the tip.

In tone, the underside is one plane

Read by eye on the ten tonal front plates, the underside of the nose, between the wings, is hatched as one shadow plane on every head, lightest on the deep-folds head, and the nostrils sit inside it as darker shapes. Shade the underside first, then put the nostrils in on top of it. How to hatch a face covers which way the strokes run.

The hard-plane head in tone: the underside of the nose is one hatched plane, the nostrils darker within it.

A small turn

At 22.5 degrees the near nostril keeps its full shape on all ten heads. The far one shrinks to a small dark notch against the far wing on most of them; on the square-jaw and heavy-brow heads it runs into the line under the tip, and on the deep-folds head it nearly does. We read this by eye, since the far nostril touches the wing and tip lines too closely for the script to measure. The nose guide follows it further round, to where it hides.

The heavy-jaw head at 22.5 degrees. The near nostril is a full bean; the far one is a small notch against the far wing.

How to draw nostrils, step by step

The deep-folds head, tied with the soft-planes head as closest to typical spacing. The ticks in 2 mark that split, within 2% of the width of this head's own; in 4 the dashed line is the nostrils' middle and the bar the tip's drop below it. Red is each step's addition; earlier marks blue-grey, earlier lines grey; the dotted line is the plate's center line.

Mark the width of the nose base, wing to wing.
Split it into wing, nostril, a gap of a little over a third, nostril, wing. Measure the nostrils without their tails.
Draw each nostril as a flat bean about two and a half times as wide as it is tall, full and rounded at the outer end, and let the inner end thin out toward the tip. Keep them light.
Drop the line under the tip below the nostrils at the middle.
Make the nostrils about as dark as the darkest marks in the eyes. One can stay a mid grey, as on two heads.

Common mistakes

Round holes. With our cutoff, every nostril here is wider than it is tall.
Nostrils too close together. The gap between the thick parts is a little over a third of the nose's width.
A straight line across the base. The tip hangs below the nostrils on all ten heads.
A tail on the outer end. Where a nostril thins into a line, it's the inner end on all 11 that do.
Pale nostrils. All ten heads draw them within half a step of the darkest point in the eyes.

Related guides

This guide covers width, spacing and darkness, not height. How to draw the nose from different angles builds the wedge these nostrils sit under and puts its base on the line between the middle and lower thirds of the face. Face width proportions sets the nose's width against the eyes and the mouth, and how to draw eyelids measures the lid line.

A short exercise

Draw the high-cheekbones head and the soft-planes head from the front, side by side and the same size. On each, mark the nose's width and split it into five before drawing a nostril. On the first, fill both nostrils dark; on the second, fill one dark and the other mid grey. Drop the line under each tip below the nostrils, then compare both drawings with the plates.

The high-cheekbones head is Study Pack 09 and the soft-planes head is Study Pack 06, both in Volume 2, sixteen angles in pencil and tone.

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