Face proportions for drawing, checked on four measured heads

Most drawing books give the face the same few proportions: the eyes halfway down the head, the face in three equal parts, the mouth a third of the way from the nose to the chin. They make good first marks, but they don't all hold equally well. On the four heads we measured, the eye rule held on all of them and the thirds missed by up to 40%.

The four are the 3D heads behind the first four heads in the free head rotation reference: the hard plane, gaunt planes, heavy jaw and minimal head. Unless a section says otherwise, each number below is a fraction of head height, measured down from the top of the skull, where the chin is 1. The drawn front plates land within about 2 to 4% of head height of these numbers, so a small difference between two heads can come from the drawing. Four heads is a small sample, so read the numbers as a range to expect and measure your own reference. All four are bald, so the hairline is placed in its own guide instead.

The eye line: just above halfway

The rule says the eyes sit halfway between the top of the skull and the chin. On the four heads the eye line falls at:

• Hard plane a little above halfway
• Gaunt planes a little above halfway
• Heavy jaw just above halfway
• Minimal head almost exactly halfway

All four sit at halfway or a little above it, and none falls below. On the front plates of the six Volume 2 heads, measured for how to draw a long face, the eye line sits just below halfway instead, never by more than a twentieth of the head, so treat halfway as the middle of a range. Draw the halfway line, then place the eyes on it, slightly above it for a longer face or slightly below for a shorter one. The forehead and skull above the eyes take up nearly half the height of the head, more than they seem to when you look at a face.

The brow, nose and chin: the thirds bend

The usual rule splits the face into three equal parts: hairline to brow, brow to base of the nose, nose to chin. With no hairline to measure, compare the two lower parts, nose to chin against brow to nose:

• Hard plane the lower part is about two fifths longer
• Gaunt planes the two are close to equal
• Heavy jaw the lower part is about a sixth longer
• Minimal head the lower part is about a tenth shorter

Only the gaunt planes head comes out near the rule, and the four heads spread from a shorter lower face to a much longer one.

Start with equal thirds, then correct them from your reference. Mark the brow and the base of the nose, hold a pencil at arm's length and compare the two spaces. Whichever is longer on the reference should be longer in your drawing.

The brow itself lands a little under two fifths of the way down on these heads. On the hard plane head that is about a twentieth of the head's height above the middle of the ball, so the Loomis guide follows the brows rather than the equator of the ball.

The mouth: a quarter to a third below the nose

The rule puts the line between the lips a third of the way from the base of the nose to the chin. Measured down that nose to chin space, the mouth falls at:

• Hard plane just under a third
• Gaunt planes a third
• Heavy jaw a quarter
• Minimal head a little over a quarter

So the lip line lands between a quarter and a third of the way down. On the ten front pencil plates, measured for how to draw lips from the front, it falls at about a third, sometimes a little more, the upper end of that range; a few pixels of drawing move this small space a lot. Put the first mark a third of the way down, then measure it on your reference.

Measure your own reference

On any reference, compare these spaces before you draw features:

1. Top of the skull to the eye line, against eye line to chin. Expect about equal, with the top part a little shorter.
2. Brow to the base of the nose, against base of the nose to chin. Expect anything from the lower part 10% shorter to 40% longer.
3. Base of the nose to the lip line, against lip line to chin. Expect the upper part to be a quarter to a third of the whole.
4. The top of the ear, against the brow and the eye line. On the gaunt planes and heavy jaw heads it's level with the brow; on the hard plane and minimal head it sits lower, near the eyes.

Hold the pencil at arm's length with your elbow straight, line its tip up with one landmark and slide your thumb to the next. Keep your thumb in place, move the pencil to the next space and see how many times the first length fits. Write the result next to the drawing as a ratio, for example "lower face one and a half times the middle".

Widths have their own rules, such as one eye's width between the eyes and about five across the head. How to draw the head from the front covers them.

Common mistakes

• Eyes too high. On all four heads the skull above the eyes is nearly half the head. Check the eye line against halfway before you draw an eye.
• Equal thirds on every face. The lower face is where these heads differ most, so measure it.
• Thirds measured from the top of the skull. The thirds rule starts at the hairline. Measured from the crown, the brow mark lands too high.

A short exercise

Open the hard plane and minimal head pages and draw both from the front at the same height on the page. Draw only the head outline and five horizontal lines: brow, eyes, base of the nose, lips and chin, and leave the features for last. Then trace one drawing's lines on tracing paper, lay the tracing over the other drawing and compare where the lines fall.

The rules across the face, for the eyes, nose and mouth, are checked on ten heads in face width proportions. To draw a whole face with these lines in order, see how to draw a face step by step. The same heights in profile, with how the brow, nose tip and chin line up, are measured on ten heads in side profile proportions. The landmarks themselves are introduced in parts of the head for drawing. All four heads are in Head rotation volume 1, which comes with our book How to Draw the Head.

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