How to draw the head from the back

The back of the head feels unfamiliar because the face is no longer doing the measuring for you. There is no clear nose length, eye spacing, or mouth line to organize the drawing. What remains is a large cranial mass, two ears, a narrow piece of jaw, and the neck. If you start by inventing those pieces one at a time, the head often becomes too wide, too flat, or disconnected from the shoulders.

The useful shift is to treat the back view as a turn of the same solid you already understand from the front. Build the cranium first, then use the ears and jaw as checks on its direction.

Start with the cranial mass

Draw a simple egg or ball for the cranium. Do not add the ears yet. Put a vertical center line over the surface, not down the flat page. At a straight back view, the line stays near the middle. As the head turns, it slides toward the far edge and shows how much of each side is visible.

Next, mark the widest part of the skull. It usually sits above the ears, not at the jaw. This one decision prevents the common helmet shape where the sides drop straight down from the crown.

Place the ears as a pair

At the back view, the ears are useful because you can compare them directly. Check their height before their detail. A small box or curved wedge is enough. If one ear is larger, higher, or farther from the center line, ask whether the head is turning or whether the drawing has drifted.

When the view moves toward three-quarter back, the near ear becomes clearer and the far ear narrows. Keep both attached to the same horizontal band around the head. That band should wrap around the cranial form just like the center line does.

Let the jaw appear late

From the back, only the outer corners of the jaw may be visible. Avoid drawing a full front-facing jaw shape under the skull. Start at the ear, find the small descending edge behind the jaw, then let it turn inward toward the chin. On a strict back view, that inward turn is mostly hidden.

The jaw should feel suspended under the cranium rather than pasted to its outer edge. Leave room for the side of the neck to pass behind it.

Attach the neck to the skull

The neck does not begin at the jaw corners. It rises higher and attaches under the back of the cranium. Draw two short, inward-curving lines from beneath the skull, then widen them as they descend. If the neck starts too low, the head looks like a flat cutout. If it begins too far apart, the skull and neck merge into one block.

Use the small notch where the base of the skull meets the neck as a value change, not a heavy outline. A few light hatch marks can separate the planes without turning the area into a dark collar.

Check the neighboring views

After the back view, draw the view immediately to its left or right. Keep the cranium the same size. Watch the center line move, one ear widen, the other narrow, and a sliver of cheek or jaw appear. If every feature changes at once, return to the cranial ball and rebuild the turn from that stable mass.

One good test is to cover the facial side of the neighboring drawing. The remaining skull, ear, and neck should still look like the same head as the back view. This keeps the exercise about rotation rather than sixteen separate portraits.

If you want four angles and an overlay to test this approach before buying anything, the free head rotation sampler is available for a first study.