How to draw ears from the front: height, flare and rim

From the front, the ear turns its edge toward you. It looks thin, so it's tempting to draw it small and tuck it against the head. On the ten heads measured here it keeps its full height, stands well clear of the skull, and on seven of them runs past both the eye line and the base of the nose.

The heads come from the free head rotation reference. On both ears of each pencil plate at 0 degrees we took:

The top and the lobe, the highest and lowest points of the ear's outline, read by a script inside a window drawn around each ear and checked on gridded crops.
The outer edge, the point of the rim furthest from the head, and the side of the skull just above the ear.
The rim, the gap between the outer edge and the line inside it, a quarter of the way down the ear.

Every pick was drawn back on its plate and checked by eye. The numbers come as shares of the nose's length, from the eye line through the inner corners of the eyes to the base of the nose. You can measure it on your own drawing. The eye line and base for these heads come from our nose from the front measurements. All ten heads are bald and drawn in one style, so the ranges describe these drawings, not people's ears. The step strip near the end builds one ear mark by mark.

The ear is about one and a half nose lengths tall

Measured from top to lobe against the nose, the ears are about one and a half nose lengths on eight heads. The minimal head's ears are about one and a quarter and the gaunt-planes head's about one and a sixth.

Older rules put the ear between the brow and the base of the nose. On these plates the brow can't be told apart from the lid lines, so this guide places the ear by the eye line instead.

Top a quarter above the eye line, lobe a quarter below the nose

On a typical head of the ten, the top sits about a quarter of a nose length above the eye line, and the lobe about a quarter below the base of the nose.

The heads spread around that:

Six heads clear both lines by about an eighth of a nose length or more: minimal, deep-folds, soft-planes, square-jaw, high-cheekbones and heavy-brow. Their tops sit about an eighth to a third of a nose length above the eye line and their lobes about a sixth to just under a third below the nose.
The full-lips head reaches a little over a third of a nose length above the eye line, but its lobes hang only about a twelfth below the nose.
The gaunt-planes head has the shortest ears. They reach about a sixth of a nose length above the eye line and stop level with the base of the nose.
The hard-plane and heavy-jaw heads carry the whole ear lower. Their tops sit at the eye line or just under it, and their lobes hang about half a nose length or more below the nose.

The plates don't show why those two are low. For a head seen clearly from below, the ears do drop against the features, as how to draw the head from below shows.

Draw it at full height

The ear on the profile plate of the same head spans about the same rows. Its top stays almost level with the front view's on every ear. Its height is almost the same on seven heads and a little taller on the hard-plane, full-lips and high-cheekbones heads. We read the side-view lobes by eye on zoomed crops; on the hard-plane and full-lips heads the lobe is shaded into the jaw and harder to read, and on the high-cheekbones head we can't tell why it reads taller. Either way, the front view keeps the ear's height on these plates.

How far the ear stands out

Measure from the side of the skull just above the ear out to the furthest point of the rim. On six heads (minimal, soft-planes, square-jaw, full-lips, high-cheekbones and heavy-brow) that's about a third of a nose length. The hard-plane, gaunt-planes and heavy-jaw heads stand out further, about two fifths or a little more, and the deep-folds head least, just under a quarter. On a head with hair, take the side of the skull under the hair, not the hair's outline.

The ear is furthest out in its upper half on every head, and the stretch of rim near that furthest point ends by about halfway down. Below that, the outline slants back in to meet the jaw at the lobe.

The gaunt-planes head from the front. Its ears stand out two fifths of a nose length, among the furthest of the ten, and stop level with the base of the nose.

The rim is a narrow band

A quarter of the way down the ear, the outer edge and the line just inside it are a twentieth to a tenth of a nose length apart, about a twelfth on a typical ear. On the minimal head the inner line is faint there, so it was read four tenths of the way down. That band is the rim. Inside it, these plates draw the inner ridge as one or two lines and the bowl as a narrow opening against the head. Because the ear stands out at an angle, you see some of its inside, but on these plates not the whole bowl.

Both ears on the same lines

On these plates the left and right ears of each head match closely: tops, lobes and outer edges fall almost exactly in matching positions on all ten heads. From these references, draw both on the same two lines with about the same flare. How to draw a symmetrical face covers when a face should look uneven.

Both heavy-brow ears on the same marks: the eye line and nose base in red, each ear's marks in blue.

How to draw an ear from the front, step by step

The heavy-brow head's ear on the left of the picture, the tallest of the ten. Its top and lobe sit a little over a quarter of a nose length past the eye line and the nose's base, and it stands out about a third. In 3 the dashed line drops from the side of the skull; in 5 the short bar is the rim. New lines red, earlier marks blue-grey; faint straight lines are the plate's construction lines.

Draw the eye line and the base of the nose, and measure the nose's length between them.
Mark the top and the lobe. Put the top about a quarter of a nose length above the eye line, and the lobe about a quarter below the base of the nose. For a head seen from below, move both down; we didn't measure by how much.
Mark the outer edge about a third of a nose length out from the side of the skull just above the ear, in the upper half of the ear.
Draw the outline from the top out to that mark and back in to the jaw at the lobe.
Add the rim's inner line about a twelfth of a nose length inside the outer edge, then the inner ridge and the bowl against the head.

Common mistakes

An ear that stops short of the eye line or the nose. Seven of these heads run past both, on a typical head by about a quarter of a nose length at each end.
An ear drawn shorter from the front than from the side. Its height is about the same in both views.
An ear pressed flat to the skull. It stands out about a third of a nose length.
An ear widest at the lobe. It's widest in the upper half and narrows to the lobe.

A short exercise

Draw the gaunt-planes head and the heavy-brow head from the front at the same size. Before any detail, draw the eye line, the base of the nose and the side of the skull, then mark each ear's top, lobe and outer edge. The gaunt-planes ears should stop level with the nose and stand out further; the heavy-brow ears should run about a quarter of a nose length past the eye line and the nose at each end. Then lay each drawing beside its plate.

The gaunt-planes head is Study Pack 02, in Volume 1, and the heavy-brow head is Study Pack 10, in Volume 2.

How to draw ears at every angle follows the same ear around the head. This guide is one step in how to draw the head at any angle, which puts all the head guides in order.