Drawing different face shapes from one construction
Archive of Fine Arts
When people learn one way to construct a head, every head they draw starts to look like the same person. The construction did its job: it gave them a skull, a center line, a brow line and a jaw. What it didn't tell them is which of those parts to change to get a different face.
The answer is that most face shapes are a change to two or three landmarks while the rest of the construction stays put. The ten heads in the reference library are different people built with one construction method and one set of landmarks, so they show this well.
Keep the cranium and the brow line
Start every face the same way: the ball of the cranium, the curved center line, and the brow line wrapping around the head, with the eye line just below it and the ear behind the middle of the skull. Skulls and ears vary between people, but far less than the features hanging from them, so keep this scaffold fixed while you learn and let the face below it change.
The brow: how far it projects
On the heavy-brow head the brow line is in its usual place, but the bone along it stands forward. Draw it as a shelf across the forehead and set the eyes back underneath. In profile the brow steps forward a little over the dip at the bridge of the nose; most of the weight comes from the shadow under the ridge, carried down over the upper lids (how to draw a brow ridge). Nothing else on the head needs to change for the face to read as heavy-browed.
The cheekbones: where the face is widest
On most heads the widest part of the face is somewhere between the cheekbones and the jaw. On the high-cheekbones head it is clearly at the cheekbones, and the face narrows below them toward the chin. Mark the cheekbone as a point on the side of the face, just below and outside the eye, before you draw the jaw. At three-quarter that point stays on the outer contour longer than the jaw does. In profile it sits inside the silhouette, in front of the ear. How to draw cheekbones covers the point, the arch and the hollow view by view.
The jaw: how wide the corners are
The heavy-jaw head keeps the cheekbones and carries the face's width nearly straight down to the jaw corners, so the lower face becomes a box (how to draw a square face). The square-jaw head has a narrower jaw that tapers more from the front, but the same box places its corners as the head turns. Draw the jaw as a box in perspective: as the head turns, the near corner stays wide and the far corner tucks behind the cheek. How to draw a jawline places the corners view by view.
Age: what sits on top of the planes
The deep-folds head is an older face, but its planes are the same ones. The fold from the nose to the corner of the mouth lies on the front of the cheek, and in profile the jaw line sags into the jowl. Draw the construction first, then lay the folds on it so each crease follows the surface it sits on; how to draw an older face goes through them view by view. The soft-planes head goes the other way: a smoother face where the same turns happen gradually, with few edges to draw. Drop its chin further below the ears and the same curve reads as an oval (how to draw an oval face).
Practice by changing one thing at a time
Draw a head you know at one angle. Draw it again, changing only the jaw. Then only the cheekbones. Then only the brow. When each change still turns correctly at three-quarter and in profile, you have learned that landmark rather than one face. Each head in the library has its own page with all sixteen angles in tone and most of them in pencil, so you can check the changed landmark through the whole turn.
The heads are sold one at a time as study packs, or as 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.
Last updated: October 17, 2026