How to draw a thin face: the shading inside the outline

To make a face look thin, start inside the outline. The two heads below have nearly the same outline from the cheekbones down to the jaw, and only one of them looks gaunt. The difference sits in the shading on the side of the face.

The figures come from two bald heads in the free head rotation reference: the gaunt-planes head, a lean, older face, and the minimal head, a younger face with few hard edges. Both are shaded as if lit from above, with the shadows under the brow, the nose and the chin. Distances are read to within about 2 percent of the face's width. To read tones on your own reference the same way, make a grayscale copy and sample it with an eyedropper tool, or squint until only the light and dark shapes are left. Tones below are given in steps of a nine-step pencil value scale from white to black.

From the front

1. Keep the outline. At the height of the mouth and at the corners of the jaw, the two faces are the same width within 2 percent. Both jaws also turn from the side of the face into the jaw line over the same short distance. Above the cheekbones the minimal head's skull is wider, but from the cheekbones down the outlines nearly match, so the outline isn't what separates them.
2. Shade a band down the outer cheek. On the gaunt head, read straight down the outer edge of the face, just inside the outline. From the height of the cheekbone to the height of the base of the nose the tone drops to about one step darker than the cheekbone above. The band is a narrow strip at the side of the face. It doesn't cross the cheek toward the nose.
3. Leave the lower cheek light. Below the band, just above the corner of the jaw, the tone comes back to the light of the cheekbone. Then the jaw edge darkens again. So the outer edge reads light, dark, light, dark from the cheekbone down. On these plates that light patch is what makes the band read as a dip instead of a shadow on a rounded cheek.
4. Compare the minimal head. On the minimal head the same strip slides slowly from paper light to about half a step darker near the jaw, with no light patch. In the box where the gaunt head has its band, the minimal head stays nearly paper white and the gaunt head is about one step darker.

The band is a middle value, about one step below the lit cheek. Shaded close to black, it turns into a hole.

At three-quarter view

At three-quarter view the band under the near cheekbone slants. It starts faint near the ear, under the arch of the cheekbone, then darkens and drops a little as it comes forward. It ends about level with the base of the nose, well short of the corner of the mouth. At its darkest it is about one step darker than the paper above and below it.

The jaw needs no change here either: the gaunt head and the minimal head both turn from the back edge of the jaw to the underside within about a seventh of the face's width. The far cheek is hidden behind the nose on both heads, so put the thinness on the near side.

The point of the cheekbone and the arch running back to the ear are placed step by step in how to draw cheekbones. Place them first and hang the band under them.

In profile

From the side, the band under the cheekbone is lighter than from the front. Just under the cheekbone the gaunt head is barely darker than the minimal head, a smaller gap than the full step from the front. The underside of the jaw is where tone still separates them: just below the jaw line the gaunt head is about two steps below the paper and the minimal head about one.

The jaw line changes too. On the gaunt head it runs straight from its corner down to where the throat begins, and on the minimal head it makes one long, shallow curve to the chin.

What else is going on

These are two drawings, and the gaunt head differs from the minimal head in more than its cheeks. Its eyes sit deeper under the brow, and it is older. The lines on its forehead and the fold from the nose past the mouth come with age; they are drawn in how to draw an older face. A young thin face gets the band and the light patch without them.

The neck is the same story. On the gaunt plate two lines run from under the jaw down toward the middle of the neck, the edges of the two sternocleidomastoid muscles, which run from behind the ears to the top of the breastbone. On a thin or older neck they often show. The minimal plate shows only a short stub of neck below the chin, about a third as much as the gaunt plate, so these two plates can't compare it.

The temples don't separate them either. In profile the temple is nearly paper white on both heads. A very thin face can sink at the temple, so draw it if your reference shows it.

A short exercise

Open the minimal head at 0 degrees and trace its face lightly from the cheekbones down. Leave that outline where it is. Inside it, shade a narrow band down the outer edge of each cheek from the height of the cheekbone to the height of the nose base, leave a light patch above each corner of the jaw, and darken the jaw edge. Then put your drawing next to the gaunt-planes head at 0 degrees and compare the band with yours.

Repeat at 45 degrees, with the band slanting down and stopping level with the nose base. At 90 degrees, keep the cheek to light hatching, draw the jaw as a line, and put the darker tone under it.

The jaw itself is placed in how to draw a jawline, the hollows around the eyes in how to draw eye sockets, and the neck in how to draw the neck. For why a surface turned away from the light takes a middle value, see the planes of the head and how light falls on them. The gaunt-planes head is Study Pack 02 and the minimal head is Study Pack 04, both in Volume 1.

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