How to draw the head with the box method, measured on ten heads

The box method starts the head as a box. You draw the box at the angle you want, put the center line and the brow, eye and nose lines on its faces, and only then round it off into a skull and a face. A box is easy to draw in perspective, and every line on its faces turns with it. Unlike the ball of the Loomis method, the box holds the face as well as the skull, with only the nose and the ears standing out of it.

What the method doesn't settle is the size of the box. So we measured it on the front and side views of all ten heads in the free head rotation reference.

Every size below is measured against head height, from the top of the skull to the bottom of the chin. These are ten drawn study heads, not a population, so a small difference between two heads can come from the drawing. Use the numbers as a starting box. All ten heads are bald, which leaves the skull outline easy to read.

The front: about seven-tenths as wide as it is tall

Measure the width of the skull at its widest. On these heads the sides of the skull run almost straight from the temples down to the tops of the ears, so measure anywhere along that stretch and leave the ears out. From narrowest to widest:

Gaunt planes, hard plane about two thirds as wide as tall
Heavy jaw, square jaw, deep folds, high cheekbones, minimal head, full lips about seven tenths
Heavy brow, soft planes nearly three quarters

Draw the front of the box at about 7 wide by 10 tall. The ears stick out past it and bring the total to about four fifths of the height.

The side: deeper than it is wide

In profile, measure from the back of the skull to the front of the brow, and leave the nose out. From shallowest to deepest:

Deep folds, square jaw, heavy brow, soft planes a little under nine tenths of the height
Hard plane, high cheekbones, full lips, heavy jaw, minimal head a little over nine tenths
Gaunt planes almost as deep as it is tall

The box is a little less deep than it is tall. Add the nose and the depth comes to about the full height, so the whole side view, nose included, fits in roughly a square.

Put the two views together and the box isn't a cube. On every head it is deeper than it is wide, the width somewhere between two thirds and five sixths of the depth.

Where the face and the ear sit in the box

The front of the box sits at the brow, and the nose tip stands out past it by about a tenth of head height. The chin comes back to about the front of the box: within a twentieth of the box's depth of the brow line on nine heads, and about a tenth in front of it on the hard plane head.

On the side of the box, the ear sits around the middle line, halfway between the back of the skull and the brow. Measured from the back of the skull, its back edge sits a third of the way to the brow or a little more, and its front edge around halfway, at most three fifths. The middle line crosses the ear on eight heads, most of them with more of the ear behind it; on the full lips head nearly two-thirds is in front. On the gaunt planes and heavy jaw heads the whole ear is behind the line. The ear's height and tilt are in the profile guide.

One box at three angles

The three drawings below put one box on the high cheekbones head, in the middle of the ten on both width and depth. The three-quarter box is the front and profile box turned 45 degrees. Solid blue lines are edges you can see, dashed blue lines are edges hidden behind the head, and the rust line is the center line on the front of the box or, in profile, the middle line on its side. The lighter tint is the front face and the darker tint the side face.

From the front, the box touches the top of the skull, the temples and the chin, and the ears stand out past its sides.

Turned 45 degrees, the side face is wider than the front face. The drawings are made from eye level, so the top of the box is edge-on; the small box shows it from a little above. The round skull and the narrower face sit well inside the outer corners, which step 6 cuts away. The middle line is left off because the ear grows from inside the side face, not on it.

In profile, the box runs from the back of the skull to the brow. The nose stands out in front, and the middle line crosses the ear with more of the ear behind it.

Drawing the head with the box

Draw the box at the angle you want, 7 wide, 10 tall and 9 deep.
On the front face, draw the center line and the eye line at about halfway. The face proportions guide gives the brow and nose base.
Carry the brow and eye lines around onto the side face, parallel to the top edges of the box.
On the side face, place the ear across the middle line or just behind it, on most heads with more of it behind, with its top between the brow line and the eye line.
Draw the jaw as two lines: up the back of the jaw from its corner to just under the ear, and forward along the bottom of the box to the chin, with the corner shaped as in the jawline guide.
Cut the box down to a head. Round the top and the back of the skull so they touch the box only at their highest and furthest points. Then cut off the two front vertical edges with a narrow side plane that runs from the temple down past the cheekbone, so the front of the face is narrower than the front of the box. The planes of the head shows where those cuts fall.

Turning the box

Because the box is deeper than wide, its side face soon takes up more of the drawing than its front face. For a box 7 wide and 9 deep, drawn without perspective, the two faces look equally wide at about 38 degrees, and at 45 degrees the front shows about 5 units against the side's six and a half. That's why the side of the head fills so much of a three-quarter view.

A second head, the square jaw, at 45 degrees and shaded. Without a box drawn on it, the side of the head still takes up more of the drawing than the front of the face.

If the side looks too narrow in a three-quarter drawing, the box was probably drawn too shallow. The three-quarter view guide follows the features through that turn. Tilting the head up or down is the same box tipped forward or back, covered in how to draw a tilted head.

Common mistakes

A cube. From the front it makes the head too wide, and from the side too short.
Ears in the width. The skull comes out too wide and the face spreads to fill it.
Depth to the nose. Draw the box to the brow and let the nose stand out of it, or the skull loses about a tenth of its depth.

If your reference falls outside these ranges, follow the reference: it still starts as a box, only with different sides.

A short exercise

Open the front view, three-quarter view and profile pages and pick one head. Draw only its box at each of the three angles, with the center line, the eye line and an ear mark. Then lay tracing paper over the front and profile drawings and draw a rectangle around each skull, from the top to the chin. Compare each rectangle's width with its height and check your boxes against them: about seven tenths for the front and nine tenths for the side.

All ten heads are in Head rotation volume 1 and volume 2. This guide is one step in how to draw the head at any angle, which puts all the head guides in order.