How to draw a forehead: the slope, the brow step and where it turns

From the front, the forehead is the space between the brows and the hairline, and how to draw a hairline places its top edge. In profile it's a line, and that line decides whether a forehead looks sloping or upright. This guide reads three things on that line:

• The slope: how far the outline leans back over a sixth of the head's height above the brow, as an angle from upright.
• The brow step: how far the front of the brow stands ahead of the dip at the root of the nose.
• The turn: the height where the outline leans past 45 degrees and becomes the top of the head.

The heads come from the free head rotation reference. On each profile pencil plate we traced the outline and read the front of the brow, the root of the nose, the base of the nose and the front of the ear by eye on crops enlarged two to four times. Treat the steps as rough reads. Slopes are good to 1 or 2 degrees where the brow comes to a point, but where its front is flat for a few percent of the head's height, starting from a different point on that flat part moves the slope by up to 3 or 4 degrees, so we start from its middle. The turn is harder to place precisely. The numbers describe these drawings, not people.

Sloping or upright

The gaunt-planes head leans back about 25 degrees from upright: the line moves back a little under half as far as it rises. The soft-planes head leans back about 9, moving back about a sixth as far as it rises. Both are drawn level, with a faint horizontal construction line running flat across the plate, so the difference is the forehead, not the pose.

Seven of the ten heads are drawn level or within about 3 degrees of it. Four of them, the soft-planes, full-lips, high-cheekbones and heavy-brow heads, lean back about 9 degrees. The deep-folds and square-jaw heads lean about 15 to 16, and the gaunt head stands well apart at 25.

Over that stretch, the soft-planes and high-cheekbones foreheads stay almost straight, and the heavy-brow forehead only strays a little more. Five foreheads bow forward off the line by up to about 2 percent of the head's height, most on the hard-plane head, and the gaunt and square-jaw lines sit up to about 1 percent behind it. So start the lower forehead with a straight line from the brow, then check it against your reference. Higher up, every forehead bends more on its way to the top of the head.

The brow step

Where the forehead meets the nose, the outline dips at the root of the nose. How far the brow stands ahead of that dip varies a lot between foreheads with the same slope:

• At about 9 degrees: almost none on the soft-planes head, then about 1 percent on the full-lips head and between 1 and 2 percent on the heavy-brow and high-cheekbones heads.
• The deepest: about 2 percent on the gaunt and deep-folds heads and a little under that on the hard-plane head.

On the whole, the more sloped foreheads here carry the deeper steps, but the deep-folds head leans back only 15 degrees and its step matches the gaunt head's. The deepest step is about 2 percent of the head's height, a small notch. The heavy-brow head's step is only middling: as how to draw a brow ridge shows, its weight is mostly the shadow under the ridge.

Set the slope first, then choose the step on its own.

Where the forehead turns

On the level heads, the outline keeps rising for a little over a quarter to nearly a third of the head's height above the brow before it leans past 45 degrees into the top of the head. The gaunt head, the most sloped of the level heads and the only steep one, turns sooner, a little under a quarter of the head's height above the brow.

That matters for the hairline. The rule in how to draw a hairline puts it one nose length, from the brow to the base of the nose, above the brow. On the soft-planes, heavy-brow, square-jaw and high-cheekbones heads it lands about 4 to 5 percent of the head's height below the turn, on the front of the forehead. On the full-lips and deep-folds heads it lands close to the turn. On the gaunt head it lands about 8 percent past the turn, on the top of the head. When it lands past the turn, the forehead runs onto the top of the head; decide by eye whether you want that, or bring the hairline down to the turn.

Check the tilt before you copy the slope

Read straight off the plate, the hard-plane head has the most sloped forehead of the ten, 28 degrees. But its horizontal construction line rises about 6 degrees toward the face, and the line from the front of the ear to the base of the nose is about 9 degrees flatter than on the level heads. The whole head is tipped chin-up. Level it and the forehead leans back about 18 to 22 degrees, depending on which line you level by: still sloped, but less than the gaunt head. The heavy-jaw and minimal heads are tipped the same way, by 4 to 9 degrees.

So before you copy a forehead, check the tilt. A construction line that should be level is the best check, when the reference has one. Without one, draw a line from the front of the ear to the base of the nose: on the level heads here it drops toward the face by about 12 to 15 degrees, and we read it only to about 3 degrees, so treat it as a rough check. If it runs clearly flatter, the head is tipped back and the forehead will read more sloped than it is. If it runs clearly steeper, the head is tipped forward and the forehead will read more upright.

Drawing it

These steps come from ten drawings in one style, so treat the numbers as starting points.

1. Mark the front of the brow and the root of the nose below it.
2. Check the tilt with a level construction line or the line from the ear to the base of the nose.
3. Start the lower forehead with a straight line up from the brow for about a sixth of the head's height, leaning back about a sixth as far as it rises for an upright forehead, up to a little under half for a steep one.
4. Bend it gradually after that, so it passes 45 degrees about three tenths of the head's height above the brow on an upright forehead; on the one steep forehead here it passes a little under a quarter of the height above the brow.
5. Set the brow step separately, from nothing up to about 2 percent of the head's height.

Common mistakes

• Copying the slope of a tipped head. Three of these heads add 4 to 9 degrees of slope through tilt alone.
• Tying the step to the slope. At the same slope of about 9 degrees, these heads carry steps from almost none to under 2 percent.

What else is going on

The ten heads are drawings in one style, all bald, read in profile only. The slope is measured against the page on heads whose horizontal construction line runs level or within about 3 degrees; the tilt check uses that line and the ear, not a measured plane of the skull, and the two disagree by up to about 5 degrees on the tipped heads. The turn is a convention, the point where the outline passes 45 degrees, and the heads differ in height by about 8 percent. Check the numbers against other heads too.

A short exercise

Draw the gaunt-planes head and the soft-planes head in profile at the plates' own size, with only the front of the brow, the root of the nose, the forehead line and the turn. Line up the brows: a sixth of the head's height above them, the gaunt line sits about 5 percent further back. Then add the heavy-brow head the same way, and see that its line runs with the soft-planes line while its brow steps out about 1 percent further.

The gaunt-planes head is Study Pack 02 in Volume 1, and the soft-planes head Study Pack 06 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.