Day 5 // Learning Facial Proportions

We’ve been learning how to draw all the different facial features — now it’s time to learn about where they all go on the face! This tutorial will teach you about basic facial proportions and teach you how to set up a couple different guides to get you started. See how to draw the face from multiple angles: front, 3/4 view, and profile.

There is definitely more to learn than can be taught in an 10 minute video, and I highly reccommend researching more on your own. There are a lot of different methods for setting up facial proportions guides. If you want to learn more, look up the Loomis method and the Reilly method and find more resources in the Pinterest board for this lesson. Above all, find what works for you and practice, practice, practice!

Basic Guidelines

Eyes are halfway down the head

The space between the eyes is equal to one eye’s width

The edges of the nose line up with the inside corners of the eyes

The corners of the mouth line up with the centers of the eyes

More facial proportion rules

The width of the head is roughly five eyes wide from ear to ear.

The length of the ear is from the eyeliner to the bottom of the nose.

Children’s faces are more square than long and their features are lower, below the center line for babies.

Homework

Practice your facial proportions. Start by drawing the full proportions guide, and then the try the more simple approach. Practice the different angles: 3/4 view with different tilts, and profile view. Don’t get too caught up with drawing creative facial features, keep it super simple so you can focus on the proportions.

Example

Keep researching, observing and learning! I’ve made a Pinterest board full of additional resources to help learn more about drawing facial proportions.

This lesson is a part of a month-long series that will get you you familiar with the basics of drawing humans, and help you develop your own people-drawing style. To learn more, check out the People Skills Intro, or continue on to the next lesson below.