Previous weeks we studied everything about face; what about head’s positions, angles, moves?

I used to draw faces from front mostly, heads were straight for no trouble in my composition. Here you will find life saver tips about head positions and angles. No need to avoid hard(!) portraits anymore!
Here we go!

You can see basics above from my old drawings; front, 2/3 and side, I worked on Jaimie Alexander’s character from Blindspot, the first one is drawn by charcoal, the others by sketching pencils.
Drawing from front is symmetrical (not perfectly, because we are not). What I mean with symmetrical is that eyes are the same size, so are ears; both sides of face are seen equally; and they (eye and the other eye, ear and other ear) are on the same (imaginary)horizonal line.

The second drawing is a 2/3 view. Imagine we divide face with a vertical line which passes from nose. One side of the face is seen less, that part is narrow; the other side is bigger, eye is seen fully and that side’s lip part is longer. That imaginary vertical line which divides lip from middle into two, further side of lips appears short in 2/3 view. Closer part of lips is like twice of the size. In this view we see nose with an angle, too.

In the third drawing, from side, we see only one eye. Lips are shorter.

Now mind the midpoints in the image above. I had told you in my previous tutorials that eyes are in the middle of our heads (from top of head to the chin, eyes are in the middle) and here you can see how proportions change when we move our head. For example look at yourself on mirror. When you look straight your ears are somewhere between your eyes/eyebrows and end of nose ball at the sides. Now tilt your head down, then you see ears are on a higher level near your eyes, aren’t they?
Now look up and see that your ears shift to your mouth’s level.

Now let’s follow guidelines from the image above. There is a purple vertical line which divides face into two same pieces. There are other 2 purple lines which helps us to locate the eyes and mouth.
Yellow archy guidelines help to locate eyes, eyebrows and ears in the right place; because while drawing without thinking, it is very possible we might lose the sense and not even realize the mistake until the end (but something bothers in the drawing we know).
And ears as I said, yellows are about placing ears; which are somewhere between eye/eyebrow and noseball from front. But like I just said when head moves up or down, so do ears. Watch it.

Here there are two other figures; on the left side 2/3 view while it is looking up (in the arrow’s direction); and the other one is a side view while it is looking down, plus, shoulders are down by its pose.

We have already seen how general proportions of head change; but did we miss something?
Actually no; because in my previous tutorials I mentioned how nose, lips, eyes and ears look different from different angles; anyway I share in this post some of those drawings again to explain this shortly.

A very simple drawing here which shows the change of eye’s shape. The first one is from front. Pupil is right in the middle of iris and eyelid covers some of iris. If the whole iris is drawn seen, it gives a suprised or terrified expression on face. Whatever the emotion/expression you choose, iris’ and pupil’s shapes are perfect circles from front.

When head turns a bit iris’ (and pupil’s) shape turns into oval from circle. Second and third steps are about this.

Nose from different angles. See how the shape of nostrils change so much.

In 2/3 view you can draw or just imagine a slight ‘V’ from chin to the corners of eyes. Between eyes and chin there is the end of nose; between the end of nose and chin you can locate mouth right between the imaginary ‘V’ on a horizonal line. You will easily see how one side of lips are so short while other side is long.

Ears from back and front seem narrow, ears from side (profile of a head) is exact view of ears.

This is an ear from side, profile of a head. You can find more information about ears, nose and eyes in my previous tutorials.

Drop a comment if you have something to add. Happy sketching you all! ^^