A practical guide from Sketchso
How to Draw a Face for Beginners: Build It from a Ball and a Jaw
Beginners usually draw a face as a flat oval with features placed on it like stickers. It works for a perfectly front-facing face and falls apart the moment the head turns. The fix is to think of the head as a solid object first. This guide uses the ball-and-jaw construction popularised by Andrew Loomis, then gives the standard proportion rules with an honest note about how far real faces stray from them.
Start with a ball, not an oval
Draw a circle for the cranium. Slice a little off each side, because the skull is narrower side to side than front to back, and draw that slice as an ellipse. The ellipse’s angle tells you which way the head is turned: a thin ellipse means you are seeing the face nearly from the front; a fat one means the head is turned toward profile.
Hang the jaw below the ball. From the front it is roughly a rounded “U” or a soft “V”; from the side it is an angled line from below the ear to the chin. Keep it light. These are construction lines you will draw over, not the outline of the face.
Wrap three guide lines around the form
Draw a centre line down the middle of the face. On a turned head it curves around the ball, so it is not a straight vertical line. Then draw the brow line across the ball, where the eyebrows will sit, and divide the distance from the brow line to the chin in half to find the base of the nose.
Because these lines wrap around the form, they automatically put the features in perspective. When the head tilts down, the brow and nose lines curve downward like a smile seen from above. When it tilts up, they curve the other way. This is the whole reason for construction: the features follow the head instead of floating on it.
Place the features with the classic proportions
The rules below are the starting point taught in most drawing books. Use them to place features on your construction, then adjust to the face you are actually drawing.
The most common beginner mistake is placing the eyes too high. Measured from the top of the skull to the chin, the eyes sit about halfway down. Hair and the forehead make it look as if they are higher, so beginners draw a tiny forehead and a long chin.
| Relationship | Rule of thumb |
|---|---|
| Eye line | About halfway between the top of the skull and the chin |
| Vertical thirds | Hairline to brow, brow to base of nose, base of nose to chin are roughly equal |
| Eye width | The gap between the eyes is about one eye wide; the face is about five eyes wide |
| Nose width | The base of the nose is about as wide as the gap between the eyes |
| Mouth | Closer to the nose than to the chin; corners roughly below the pupils or the inner edges of the irises |
| Ears | Between the brow line and the base of the nose, seen from the side |
| Children | Eyes sit below halfway, because the cranium is large relative to the face |
These are teaching approximations, not measurements of real people.
Where real faces break the rules
The proportion rules come from Renaissance and neoclassical art, not from measuring people. When craniofacial researcher Leslie Farkas tested the classical canons against real measurements in the 1980s, most faces did not fit them. A larger international study led by Farkas, published in 2005, compared facial measurements across ethnic groups in 25 countries and found the biggest differences around the eyes and in nasal width and height, exactly the areas the canons claim are fixed.
That matters for likeness. The features that make a person recognisable are usually the ways they depart from the average: eyes set slightly wider, a longer lower third, a mouth wider than the rule. Use the canon to build a believable head, then measure the person in front of you and let the differences win.
Draw the features in the right order
Draw the eyes first, as almond shapes sitting on the eye line, with the upper lid overlapping the top of the iris. Then the base of the nose, mostly as shadow shapes rather than an outline: the nostrils, the shadow under the tip, maybe one side of the bridge. Then the mouth, paying most attention to the line between the lips, which is usually the darkest part.
Add ears last, behind the jaw’s corner and between the brow and nose lines. Finally, put the hair on as a mass that sits on top of the skull with some thickness, not painted tightly onto the ball. Hair adds height above the cranium, which is one more reason the eyes end up halfway down.
Practise turns, not just front views
Once a front view works, draw the same construction turned a quarter to the left and right, then tilted up and down. Five minutes per head is enough. The goal is to make the centre line and brow line curve correctly, not to finish a portrait.
When you are ready to draw a specific person, combine both skills: construct the head at the angle in the photo, then measure the actual spacing of their features against your construction lines.
Questions before you start
Where do the eyes go on a face?
About halfway between the top of the skull and the chin. They look higher because hair covers the top of the head, so measure from the skull, not the hairline.
Why do my faces look flat?
Usually because the guide lines are straight. Curve the centre line and the brow line around the head, and place the features on those curves.
Do I need to learn proportions if I trace?
Tracing places features for one drawing. Knowing proportions lets you spot when a reference photo is distorted, and lets you draw heads you have no photo of.