Parts of the head for drawing: the landmarks to place first

When a head drawing looks wrong, the problem is rarely the eyes or the mouth. It's usually that one of the larger parts is in the wrong place: the skull is too small for the face, the ear has drifted forward, or the jaw stops short of where it should meet the neck. These parts are the landmarks. Place them first and the features have somewhere to go.

The list below is for drawing: each part is something you can see on the outside of a head and put down with a few lines.

The cranium

The cranium is the rounded part of the skull that holds the brain, and it is the largest part of the head. In profile it is deep from front to back, and its back reaches well behind the ear. Most beginners draw it too small, which pushes the face to the front and makes the head look like a mask.

Draw it first, as a ball, and hang the face off its front. The Loomis method builds the whole head from that ball.

The brow ridge

The brow ridge is the shelf of bone above the eyes. It runs across the forehead, and in profile it is the first step out from the forehead before the bridge of the nose. On a heavy-browed face it projects further and shades the eyes. Place it as a line across the face about a third of the way down from the hairline to the chin. How to draw a brow ridge follows it through the turn.

The eye sockets

Under the brow ridge are the eye sockets, the two hollows the eyes sit in. Draw them as shallow ovals before you draw the eyes. The eyes sit inside them, set back from the brow, which is why the upper lid is often in shadow.

The cheekbone

The cheekbone runs from below the outer corner of the eye back toward the ear. It is where the front of the face turns into the side, so it is often the widest point of the face from the front. On a gaunt or high-cheekboned face it is the clearest landmark below the eyes. How to draw cheekbones places it at three angles.

The jaw corner

The corner of the jaw sits below the ear and slightly in front of it. From there the jaw runs forward and down to the chin. In a three-quarter view the near corner is the one you can see clearly; the far corner tucks behind the cheek. If the jaw corner sits too far forward, the face looks pinched. If it sits under the back of the skull, the neck has nowhere to go.

The chin

The chin is the front end of the jaw. It has a front plane of its own and a small underside. In profile, compare how far it comes forward with the brow and the lips. That relationship does more to describe a face than the shape of any single feature.

The ear

The ear sits on the side of the head, behind the middle of the skull in profile. On a level head it runs from about the eye line, or a little above it, down to the base of the nose or the top of the lip; on the plate above its top is at the eye line. It varies from head to head, so measure it against the eye and nose of the head you're drawing. It tilts back a little, following the line of the jaw. Our ears guide follows it through the turn.

The back of the skull and where the neck attaches

The back of the skull curves down behind the ear. The neck does not attach at the jaw. It rises behind the jaw and attaches under the back of the skull, so in profile the back line of the neck starts high, near the level of the ear, and the front line starts under the chin. Drawing the neck straight down from the jaw is the most common reason a head looks pasted on.

The back of the head guide shows how this attachment looks from behind.

Put them down in order

1. Cranium as a ball.
2. The brow ridge and the line under the nose, which divide the face into thirds.
3. The jaw, from the corner below the ear to the chin.
4. The cheekbone, from below the eye toward the ear.
5. The ear, from about the eye line to the nose line.
6. The neck, from under the back of the skull and from under the chin.

Then add the eyes into their sockets, the nose and the mouth. The pencil plates in the head rotation reference keep their construction lines, and the hard-plane head shown here has one at all sixteen angles, so you can check where each landmark sits as the head turns. It is Study Pack 01. For the features themselves, Head parts, volume 1 has line plates of ears, eyes, mouths and noses from the volume 1 heads, at 45-degree steps. To see the bone under these landmarks turn, read how to draw a skull at different angles.

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