How to draw a chin: front, three-quarter and profile

The chin is a small form, but it sets the profile. Pushed forward a little, it makes a face look firm; set back, it lets the mouth lead. Its position is easiest to see and to get wrong in profile, so this guide starts there and then turns the head to the front.

The drawings come from three heads in the free head rotation reference: the heavy-jaw head, the soft-planes head and the full-lips head. The numbers were measured on their profile plates.

Three parts

• The pad: the rounded front of the chin, roughly an egg shape set on its side.
• The fold under the lower lip, where the outline steps back before the chin; anatomists call it the labiomental fold.
• The underside, which turns back toward the neck. With a light from above it sits in shadow.

In profile: two checks

Before drawing either the lips or the chin, make two checks against the plate.

1. The nose-to-chin line. Lay a straight edge from the tip of the nose to the front of the chin and see whether the lower lip crosses it.
2. The drop from the lower lip. Hold a pencil upright at the front of the lower lip and see how far behind it the chin stops.

The first tells you which leads, the lips or the chin. The second tells you how far apart they are.

On the heavy-jaw head both lips sit behind the nose-to-chin line, and the chin stops less than two hundredths of the head's height behind the lower lip. Between them the outline steps in to the fold, then comes forward again to the pad. The pad's front is fairly flat and drops almost straight down before it turns under. On these three heads that in-and-out is what separates the firm chin from the others.

The soft-planes head passes the first check the same way: the lower lip sits behind the line. The second check is where it differs. The outline steps back under the lower lip about as far as on the heavy-jaw head, but the pad doesn't come forward again, so you get a step rather than an in-and-out, and the chin stops about two and a half hundredths of the head's height behind the lip. Measured from the nose tip, this is the chin that sits furthest back of the three.

The full-lips head is the only one whose lower lip crosses the nose-to-chin line. Its chin isn't set much further back from the nose than the heavy-jaw head's; the lips stand further forward, so the drop from the lower lip is the longest here, about four hundredths of the head's height. Below the lip the outline runs back to the chin in one slope, with no fold. If you draw a fold here, the mouth stops leading and the face changes.

From the front

From the front you can't see how far the chin comes forward, so the drawing has to carry it with tone. On all three heads the pad is drawn as a faint, roughly oval shape below the mouth, centered on the middle line. Compare its width with the mouth: on the heavy-jaw head it is nearly as wide, on the full-lips head about three-quarters as wide, and on the soft-planes head about two-thirds. Under it, the outline is a broad, flattish curve on the heavy-jaw head and a rounded V on the full-lips head.

Two marks carry the form. A short dark stroke under the lower lip shows the fold on all three heads; on the heavy-jaw head it is a stack of several strokes. A shadow under the jaw, darkest under the chin, separates the chin from the neck when the light is from above. Leave the pad itself light, since a hard outline round it makes it look stuck on.

At three-quarter

At 45 degrees the chin is on the far outline, but the outline no longer shows the full profile. On the heavy-jaw head it slides back smoothly from the lower lip to a nearly upright chin front, and the fold shows as a dark mark just inside the edge rather than as a notch in it. The only corner is the rounded bottom of the chin, where the underside runs back into the jaw line. On the soft-planes head the slope under the lip flattens into a rounded corner. On the full-lips head the lips lead the outline and the chin sits well back under them, about twice as far as on the heavy-jaw head.

Draw a middle line down the pad from the center of the lips, curving with the form as the head turns. The near half of the chin gets wider and the far half narrower.

Common mistakes

• Chin and lips placed by eye, without the nose-to-chin line or the drop from the lower lip.
• A fold on every chin. It is an in-and-out on one of these heads, a step on another and absent on the third.
• A hard outline round the pad from the front. Draw the fold stroke and the shadow under the jaw instead.
• A notch drawn into the outline at three-quarter. Put the fold just inside the edge as tone.

A short exercise

Open the heavy-jaw head at 90 degrees and draw only the outline from the nose to the neck. Make both checks on your drawing and on the plate: the lower lip should sit just behind the nose-to-chin line, and the chin should stop just behind the lower lip. Then do the same on the soft-planes head, where the chin stops a little further back, and on the full-lips head, where the lower lip crosses the line. The three outlines differ mostly between the lower lip and the chin.

The chin is the front end of the jaw; how to draw a jawline places the corners and the back edge, and how to draw the mouth and lips at different angles covers the lips above it. The heavy-jaw head is Study Pack 03, in Volume 1; the soft-planes and full-lips heads are Study Pack 06 and Study Pack 08, both in Volume 2.

This guide is one step in how to draw the head at any angle, which puts all the head guides in order.