DRAWING VECTOR

PORTRAITS PART 1:
THE FACIAL
STRUCTURE
BY DOINK IN TUTORIALS ON APRIL 22, 2010 3 COMMENTS

In this tutorial I will explain the basics for portrait drawing. These guidelines are a must to
know and will help you a lot in your future portrait drawings. This is only the first part and I
will post more in the close future, so make sure you stick around for more.
So lets begin.

FRONT VIEW
Every drawing starts from a basic shape that we later on model it as we like. The same rule
applies in drawing a portrait. First, draw a vertical axis that will serve as guideline, so you
dont misplace the eyes, ear, nose, mouth or any other detail. Its important you
keep a nice symmetry, especially when your subject is directly facing you. Look at the

picture below how the face geometry is built.

First, you have to identify the dimension of the eye, because this will be the reference
dimension we will use to build the rest of the face. Have you ever seen a portrait artist
working? If you did, you must have noticed his gesture holding the pencil with the arm
extended forward, closing one eye and moving his thumb on the pencil. That is the
technique used to measure the proportions using the pencil as a ruler and point-of-view as
measurement unit.
In short terms, heres the skinny of the basic proportions:

Face width is approximately 5 times the eyes length

One eyes length between the eyes

Face height is 7 to 8 times eyes length

Forehead is at least 3 times eyes length

Nose is 2 times and a bit the eyes length

Mouth is about 3/4 of an eyes length

Chin is about an eyes length.

Ears have the same height as the nose

A simple rule when youre drawing is Keep your roughs rough and your cleans
clean. This means you shouldnt spend too much worrying about the details yet,
just leave it as a rough sketch and focus on getting the proportions right.
Heres a quick trace of the figure. I made it a bit transparent to get an idea of how it will
look later on.

PROFILE VIEW
For the profile, you need to learn new geometric proportions. In the image below you will
see the approximate dimensions and angles, all reference to the eyes length, seen from
profile.
Keep in mind that this isnt an exact measurement and you need to adjust them
accordingly. There are lots of types of figures and some of them do not fit in these rules.
Those are called amorphic figures and their geometry differs completely from this one, but I
will explain them in a future post.

Notice that I preserved the proportions from the front view? Ears have the same height as
the nose and the proportions between forehead, nose, mouth and chin are about the same.
Always try to preserve the proportions from different views, it will help you in difficult
points (if youre stuck at some point, its a very high probability you are going the
right way!). Now we have new variables to consider: craniums size, distance of the ear
from the tip of the nose, the necks angle, the jaws angles and necks muscles.
At some point youll be tempted to make the cranium smaller, because you think
its too big. Dont. This is a very huge mistake that will end in having a very small
forehead and have no room left for the brain. Also when youll draw the hair, it will
cover the eyes, so all that work in putting a nice expression will be lost. Just make it big.
Dont worry; youll cover it with hair eventually (unless youre drawing a bald
figureJ ).

The shape of the skull differs from one region to another: Europeans have a round and a bit
flat on top skull, Asians have a very rounded one and Africans have an oval-shaped skull,
extended on the back side. This means that the facial proportions will be different. For
example, Africans will have the jaws more in front then an European, nose bridge is
different and the lips position and size differ.
Heres a quick trace of the sketch. We will use it in future posts as a base for the rest of
the faces parts.

PERSPECTIVE VIEW
Now for the perspective view. Since youll create a tri-dimensional view, youll
require another set of rules. As a first, you must keep in mind that dimensions are altered
and you need to estimate them as accurately as you can. Remember that art allows you to
make mistakes, but being an artist means you must decide which ones you will keep.

To constrain the proportions, imagine that the head is in a box. Just capture the front
sides proportions and the rest will follow or just add a line where you think you
wouldnt see beyond it if you would see your portrait from the front. To start easy, draw

a circle; this will be your top side of the figure. Now the axises will be curves and not
straight lines, but they preserve the parallelism.

If you want to see the mistakes you made, just turn your drawing upside down or reflect it.
Youll immediately see whats wrong and youll be able to fix it. Once
youve got the proportions right, make rough sketches of the eyes, mouth, nose and
visible facial muscles and the portrait is half way to the end.