How to Draw Human Head in the Right Measurements and Proportions

Your body and face are all basically in a specific proportion with everyone else. Of course people have different sized noses, chins, brows, etc….but, within a certain margin, you can know that the face will have certain measurements, within means. You can change these measurements a bit for people’s specific facial features. These instructions from an old drawing book by George Bridgman will guide you through the basic steps of measuring out the human head and face.

How to Draw Human Head in the Right Measurements and Proportions

Step 1

Begin by drawing with straight lines the general outline of the head.

Step 2

Then draw the general direction of the neck from its center, just above the Adam’s apple, to the pit, at the junction of the collar bones. Now outline the neck, comparing its width and length with the head.

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Step 3

Draw a straight line through the length of the face, passing it through the root of the nose, which is between the eyes, and through the base of the nose where the nose centers in the upper lip.

Step 4

Draw another line from the base of the ear at a right angle to the one you have just drawn.

Step 5

On the line passing through the center of the face, measure off the position of the eyes, mouth and chin. A line drawn through these will parallel a line drawn from ear to ear, intersecting, at right angles, the line drawn through the vertical center of the face.

Step 6

With straight lines, draw the boundaries of the forehead, its top and sides, and the upper border of the eye sockets. Then draw a line from each cheek bone at its widest part, to the chin, on the corresponding side, at its highest and widest part.

If the head you are drawing is on a level with your eyes, the lines you
have just drawn will intersect at right angles at the base of the nose and if both ears are visible and the line from the ear extended across the head, it will touch the base of both ears.

Consider the head as a cube, the ears opposite each other on its sides or cheeks and the line from ear to ear as a spit or skewer running through rather than around the head.

If the head is above the eye level, or tilted backward, the base of the nose will be above this line from ear to ear. Or should the head be below the eye level or tilted forward, the base of the nose will be below the line from ear to ear. In either case, the head will be foreshortened upward or downward as the case may be and the greater the distance the head is above or below the eye level the greater the distance between the line from ear to ear and the base of the nose. You now have the boundaries of the face and the front plane of the cube. The features may now be drawn in.

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