how to draw a head shape

Cartoon a Realistic Head: Bringing Faces to Life

While capturing a likeness can exist a claiming, heads and faces are some of the trickiest things to depict.

Let'south focus specifically on cartoon ameliorate facial features and a realistic head. Because we spend all day looking at people, we are very aware when something is a footling off in a portrait drawing or painting.

Here are useful tips to proceed in mind as y'all practice drawing a head.

1. Know your proportions

Heads are non perfect circles, and they are not perfect ovals either. You lot tin recollect of them as kind of egg-shaped, with the tapered cease toward the bottom. Of grade, this varies depending on the bodily person and the angle you are seeing them from. But let'south start with an egg…

2. Refine the jawline

If you are drawing a adult female, this egg shape might do well to depict her jawline, but let's say nosotros're drawing a man with a slightly more angular jaw and flatter chin. Permit's bring the jawline out.

3. Where to identify the optics?

Well, we have a trend to remember the eyes are closer to the height of the head than the bottom considering they are the highest facial feature. But that's not really the example.

As you tin can see, the eyes are but about halfway betwixt the lesser of the jaw and the top of the caput. There is a lot of head above the eyes, as any of us with a receding hairline know. But I skipped a step here — how far apart should the eyes be? How big should they be?

4. A good dominion of thumb is that the caput is about 5 eyes broad

That means the gap between the eyes where the bridge of the olfactory organ is located is nigh the aforementioned width as the confront on either side of the eyes. Like any rule of thumb, it's important to remember this isn't e'er the instance, and that this applies only to drawing the face head-on in a portrait.

5. Now let'south place the ears

Locate the tops just above the eyes, and bring them downwards to a point about halfway from the optics to the bottom of the jaw. Depending on the person, the ears can stick out a lot or a little, so there's not a good rule for that other than conscientious ascertainment.

Well, what do you lot know — later drawing the ears, you at present take a great idea almost where to locate the nose!

six. Add the nose

Noses do vary quite a fleck in width, so go on that in mind. The sides of this guy's nose extend a little past the within corners of his eyes.

seven. The mouth is a bit trickier

Rather than the mouth itself being halfway from the earlobes to the jawline, use that halfway point for the bottom lip. The width of the corners of the oral cavity ofttimes extends to well-nigh the location of the iris in the eyes in a higher place.

8. Eyebrow placement

This is another feature that varies profoundly from person to person. Do keep in heed that each eyebrow is generally wider than the center below it. They as well tend to be thickest toward the bridge of the olfactory organ and taper toward the sides of the face, where they ofttimes also sweep downwards.

9. Don't make the mistake of placing the hair on the very tiptop of the caput!

The hairline is typically about a quarter to a third of the way from the top of the head to the eyebrows. Or in Sir Patrick Stewart's case, backside the height of the head.

These proportions work only as easily for a adult female. Adjust the jawline to exist a trivial more rounded, make the ears a bit smaller and the neck a little narrower and you have a pretty convincing female face.

The other cool thing about knowing your proportions is yous can use them to draw a head in profile, too! Just extend your proportion lines beyond and you have a corking way to continue your caput proportions consistent.