How to Draw a Face

Learn how to draw a portrait in proportion:

What You Need:

• Paper
• Pencils
• Eraser
• Ruler
• Mirror or a person to sit in front of you

Getting started – Rough Outline

Start off by drawing a vertical line down the middle of your page with a ruler. This will be your axis of symmetry. More or less everything will be mirrored across this line.

Next you’ll draw a rough outline of the head, from the top of the forehead, to the bottom of the chin. Then you can more or less mirror this on the other side of the axis of symmetry.

The face is divided into thirds. The first third is from the top of the forehead till the top of the eyebrows. The next third is from the top of the eyebrows till the tip of your nose. The last third is from the tip of the nose until the bottom of the chin.

Dividing your face into thirds is really useful for getting the right proportions and positions. Simply measure the length of the outline of your head from top till bottom and divide it into 3; drawing horizontal lines softly across the face.

Now put in the neck. Be careful that you don’t make the neck too narrow. The neck is almost as wide as the widest part of the face!

Next, you’re going to start putting in rough outlines of the features. Use the thirds to draw the:

• EYEBROWS: Just below first line
• EARS: Take up nearly the entire middle third
• NOSE: The tip of the nose is along the top of the second line

In order to avoid spacing the eyes too close together or to far apart, there’s a simple trick you can use. The space between the eyes should be as wide as the width of one eye.

Adding the shading & finer detail

Now that you’ve got the general outline, you’re ready to put in the finer details and shading. Pay special attention to your real life example, trying to copy it as accurately as possible.

Use different pencils to give you great tonal variation, looking carefully at the areas of light and dark in the face you’re copying.

Once you have these skills down you should be able to draw a good portrait, in the right proportions. However, drawing a face can be challenging, so make sure that you keep on practising.

HAVE FUN! 🙂