Heads Are Hard Too

"Head of a Warrior (after daVinci)," silverpoint, 2011

This particular drawing is a copy of a work by Leonardo daVinci, completed around 1472. The daVinci was actually a head and torso, drawn delicately in silverpoint. This copy is my own silverpoint of just the head of the warrior. Silverpoint is utterly unforgiving--make a mistake and it will always be there because the marks can't be readily removed. So it behooves any artist doing such work to understand the features and head in detail before attempting it. But drawing the head and face is not easy.

I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago that hands were quite difficult, but drawing heads and faces can be even more so. This post is about learning competence in drawing the human face and head.

Many beginning artists have difficulty drawing believable ones. There is so much going on with the facial features, so many bumps and hollows and protuberances that beginners feel frustrated before they even begin. But like hands, drawing faces and heads can be conquered by close attention to simple shapes, correct angles and measurements, and careful and continued practice.

Simple shapes of the head include a sphere, half-sphere, pyramid and box.

The head is composed of several simple shapes, the most important of which is a sphere. The cranium and much of the skull comprise a sphere. To that sphere is added the pyramidal shape of the nose. It is the shape of the muzzle and jaw that cause the most difficulty. The muzzle can be thought of as a bit like a half-sphere, a rounded shape superimposed on the front of the face just below the nose. That is, the muzzle of most faces is slightly rounded forward when viewed in profile. The jaw shape is complex and variable and so is difficult to break into simpler shapes. The jaw can be pointed, square, rounded, etc. so a useful way to begin to break down its component shapes is to omit the chin. Then you can see that the jaw is actually almost a box and the chin is tacked on the front of the box. Of course, the jaw may be square (box-like) or narrower toward the chin. Using these few shapes can help the beginner to grasp the overall shapes, angles and dimensions of the head and avoid drawings that look as if the shapes are pasted together. Understanding the three-dimensional shapes allows the artist to build a solid, believable and consistent drawing of a head.

Julius Caesar, ca 40BC

A useful tool to begin is to understand the way that the features of an average face line up. In the diagram at right, I've superimposed several critical measurements of an average face. First, the eyes in an average head are almost always halfway from the tip of the chin to the crown of the skull. Next, note that measurement from the tip of the chin to the tip of the nose is very close to the distance from the tip of the nose to the brow line. Further, the hairline is usually about an equal distance above the brows, although the hairline has more variability. Now look at the line through the eyes and note that the inner corners of the eyes are about one eye-width apart. (Also, the head is 5 eyes wide from tip to tip of each ear.) Notice that the nose is often two eye-widths long, as well. The height of the upper lip from the tip of the nose is variably about equal to the distance from the lip to the chin. Finally, the corners of the mouth are vertically below the centers of the eyes.

Planes of the Head

Another very useful tool is a plastic, life-size model called Planes of the Head. It is cast with the correct proportions for an average human head, but also with the various planes made obvious. Notice how well the head conforms to average placement of the features. The head also has a place to screw in a tripod, so you can use it as a model at various heights and perhaps even put hats and clothing on it. You can buy it directly from the site linked above or get it via other online sources like Amazon.


Understanding these few relationships and how the features are located is a way to begin. But continual practice is the road to truly mastering the human face. That means drawing as much and as many faces and heads as possible and doing it literally every day.

In my own studio, drawing heads and faces has been a continual practice. For many years I drew with graphite or charcoal in sketchbooks, but over the past few years, for practice digital drawing has begun to claim more of my work and more time.

"Autumn," graphite and touches of chalk, 2014

This is a graphite and white chalk study of a friend's granddaughter, done for a portrait commission. She was a delight to draw. "Autumn" is about 6x8 on toned paper.

"Joan," charcoal and chalk, 2009

 Here is an even older charcoal study, also done for a portrait. This particular drawing is also enhanced with white chalk. "Joan," is 9x12 on paper. This particular study didn't become the final portrait, but remains a good study.

This digital drawing is one of my daily digital studies. This study of a man was was done using Sketchbook and three drawing layers. The bottom layer is the basic drawing, where placement of features and accurate measurements are critical. The middle layer is the dark hatching to suggest shadowed areas of the face, and the top layer is white hatching and shading to give dimensionality. Unlike traditional media where one has to work continuously on one surface, a mistake in a separate layer is easily fixed without disturbing critical parts of the drawing.

It feels appropriate to close this post with an image of a true master who could draw beyond the imaging of most people. Michelangelo Buonarotti was of course a sculptor but he is also the artist of the matchless figures in the Sistine Chapel. In this digital drawing, done in layers roughly the same way as the other digital drawing above, I was interested in the expression on the master's face and his crumpled nose (it was smashed by an older apprentice when he was a teen). This expression seems to me to confirm the master's reputation for irascibility. Once the central features were done I lost interest in completing the head and decided to let the drawing stand as you see it.