How to draw a face looking down: what moves and by how much

When a face looks down, the features no longer sit where the usual proportions put them. Against the face, the ears seem to climb, the eyes drop below the middle of the head and the face under the nose gets shorter. We measured how far each one moves.

From the front, a face tipped down 20 degrees and seen at eye level shows the head the same way as a level face seen from 20 degrees above. Only the neck and shoulders differ, and we didn't measure those. So we used the paired front plates in our free head from above reference: the minimal head and the heavy-jaw head, each drawn at eye level and from 20 degrees above at the same scale. The eye-level plates themselves tip back a few degrees, so read the tilt as about 20. On both drawings of each pair we read the top of the skull, the eye line, the base of the nose (its lowest edge at the middle of the face), the mouth, the bottom of the chin, and the top and bottom of the ear.

The usual ruler, the nose length, changes when the face tips, so the ruler here is the width of the head: the skull at its widest, without the ears. That width doesn't change when a head tips up or down. Measure it on your own drawing; if it's 10 cm, a fifth of a head width is 2 cm. Two heads at one tilt is a small sample, and the numbers describe these drawings, not people's heads, so use them to check your own drawing. Where the heads differ below, the minimal head comes first, then the heavy-jaw.

The ears stay, the face slides down

Measure everything down from the top of the skull. On both heads, the top of the ear and the bottom of the lobe stay where they were at eye level, with barely any shift. The face moves down under them:

• The eye line drops about a fifth of a head width.
• The base of the nose and the mouth drop about a quarter.
• The chin drops the least, about a sixth.

Here is where each one sits, in head widths below the top of the skull:

• Top of the ear: about two thirds at eye level and looking down.
• Eye line: about two thirds at eye level, about seven eighths looking down.
• Base of the nose: just under one at eye level, about one and a fifth looking down.
• Bottom of the lobe: about one at eye level; looking down, one on the minimal head and a little more on the heavy-jaw.
• Mouth: just over one at eye level, about one and a third looking down.
• Chin: about one and two fifths at eye level; looking down, a little over one and a half on the minimal head and about one and three fifths on the heavy-jaw.

The face under the nose shortens

From the base of the nose to the bottom of the chin is about four fifths of the eye-level distance.

Because the eye line drops less than the base of the nose, the gap between them, the nose length, gets longer: by 12 and 23 percent. So measured against its own longer nose, the face under the nose shrinks even more. At eye level it runs about one and two fifths nose lengths on the minimal head and one and two thirds on the heavy-jaw; looking down, one and about one and a sixth respectively. The mouth moves up toward the nose as well, to about a third of a nose length below its base on both heads, from about two fifths on the minimal head and just under half on the heavy-jaw at eye level.

The eyes move down the head

On a level head the eyes sit about halfway down. On these two they sit just above halfway from the top of the skull to the chin. Looking down, they sit a little below halfway, slightly lower on the minimal head. The head also gets taller on the page, from about one and two fifths head widths to about one and three fifths.

Where the ears end up

At eye level, the top of the ear sits at the eye line (within a tenth of a nose length on both heads), and the lobe ends at the base of the nose or a little below it (just below on the minimal head, a little over a quarter of a nose length below on the heavy-jaw). Looking down, with the ear held still and the face slid under it, the top of the ear sits about two thirds of a nose length above the eye line on the minimal head and about three fifths on the heavy-jaw. The lobe ends a third of the way down from the eye line to the base of the nose on the minimal head, and about halfway on the heavy-jaw.

If the ears on your drawing still line up with the eyes and the nose, the face reads as level, however much you shorten the chin.

When the face is turned

These numbers are for a face seen from the front. In profile, a face looking down is the same profile turned on the page, nodding forward around the ear, as how to draw a tilted head shows. At three-quarter it's a mix of the two.

Order of work, for a 20-degree tip

Measure each step in head widths down from the top of the skull.

1. Draw the skull and its width as you would at eye level, and put the top of the ear about two thirds of a head width down.
2. Draw the eye line about seven eighths of a head width down, about a fifth lower than at eye level.
3. Mark the base of the nose about one and a fifth head widths down, so the nose is longer than you're used to.
4. Put the mouth about one and a third head widths down, about a third of a nose length below the nose.
5. Close the chin about one and three fifths head widths down, which gives the head its full height.
6. Check the ears. The top of the ear should sit well above the eye line, and the lobe a third to halfway down from the eye line to the base of the nose.

Mistakes the plates rule out

These are checked against the two pairs of plates, not against people.

• Moving the ears down with the face. The ears stay where they were on the skull.
• Shortening the nose. From the front, a face looking down has a longer nose, not a shorter one.
• Keeping the eyes where they were. They move down the head by about a fifth of a head width.

What these numbers don't cover

We measured one tilt, about 20 degrees, on two heads, from the front only, and only the head, not the neck or the shoulders. A steeper tilt moves everything further; we didn't measure how much. We didn't measure how far the construction lines curve.

Related guides

How to draw the head from above shows the same plates with the curving lines and the hidden neck, and the turned views from above. How to draw a face looking up measures the opposite tilt on the minimal head, and the head from a steep angle a bigger tilt. Face proportions gives the eye-level spacing these numbers start from, and ears from the front the eye-level ear.

A short exercise

Draw the minimal head from the front twice, the same size: once at eye level and once looking down. Start both from the same skull and keep the ears in the same place on it. On the second, use the head-width marks from the order of work. Lay your drawings beside the two plates in the head from above reference.

The minimal head is Study Pack 04 and the heavy-jaw head Study Pack 03, both in Volume 1.

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