How to draw an oval face: the round curve in a taller box

An oval face is easy to confuse with a round one, and on drawn heads the two turn out to share the same curve from the ear to the chin. What changes is how far that curve drops. Here is how that looks on two heads, with a box you can draw to check your own.

The figures come from two bald heads in the free head rotation reference: the minimal head, which has the longer lower face, and the soft-planes head, the round face from how to draw a round face. Both are young, smooth faces in the same drawing style, so the comparison is mostly about proportion. Distances are compared as shares of each face's own width; treat them as close drawing checks rather than exact values.

Draw a box under the ears

The minimal head (left) and the soft-planes head (right) at 0 degrees, at one scale. Top bar: the width where the ear lobes end. Middle bar: the width halfway down. Upright bar: the drop to the chin.

Draw a level line where the ear lobes end and mark where it meets the sides of the face: that is the width of the box. Then drop a line from its middle to the bottom of the chin for its depth.

On the minimal head the box is about half as deep as it is wide: the chin sits about half the face's width below the ear lobes.
On the soft-planes head it is a little over a third as deep as it is wide.

The other eight heads in the reference fall around them. Six sit between two fifths and a half, the gaunt-planes head, the longest face of the ten, at a little over half, and the heavy-brow head at a little over a third, like the soft-planes head. So for an oval, put the chin about half the width below the ear lobes, and for a round face about a third. A tall box alone is not the whole story, though: several of these heads have one. The other half is how early the jaw narrows.

One catch: the minimal head's ear lobes end high, only a little below the base of the nose, while the soft-planes lobes end well below it. So check the length a second way that ignores the ears: measure from the eye line to the chin, and compare it with the face's width at the mouth. The minimal head is about as long as it is wide there. The soft-planes head is about nine tenths as long. The answer is the same: the oval is the longer face.

Then draw the same curve

Inside the box, the minimal and soft-planes jaws follow almost the same path once each is scaled to its own box. Measure the face's width at a few depths, as a share of the top bar:

Halfway down: about four fifths on both heads.
Three quarters down: about three fifths on both.
Just above the chin, nine tenths of the way down: a little over a third on both.

A true half oval would be a little wider at each depth: nearly nine tenths, two thirds and just under half. Both heads come in a little inside that. The six heads in the middle group hold more of their width, 85 to 90 percent of it halfway down, so their jaws come in later and nearer the chin. On this pair, then, the oval is the round face's early-narrowing curve drawn into a taller box.

Keep the turns gradual

Follow either outline from the ear lobe down and both make their sharpest turn at the chin itself, bending a little at a time above it. A jaw that turns a firm corner partway down the side is drawn in how to draw a square face.

Telling an oval from its neighbors

Round: the same curve in a shorter box, with the chin about a third of the width below the ear lobes. See how to draw a round face.
Long: the box grows taller still and the jaw stays wide. The gaunt-planes head drops a little over half its width and is still about nine tenths as wide halfway down. See how to draw a long face.
Heart: the jaw narrows under a wide skull. About a sixth of the head's height above the chin, the full-lips head's jaw is about two thirds as wide as its skull, the narrowest of the ten. On the minimal and soft-planes heads it is closer to three quarters. See how to draw a heart-shaped face.

Drawing it

Build the usual construction first, as in drawing different face shapes from one construction.
Draw a level line where the ear lobes end, and mark the face's width on it.
Drop the chin about half that width below the line. For a round face, drop it about a third.
Check the width on the way down: about four fifths of the line halfway down, about three fifths three quarters down.
Bend the outline a little at a time, and save the sharpest turn for the chin.
Check the length without the ears: from the eye line to the chin about as long as the face is wide at the mouth.

What else is going on

These are two drawings in one style, both young, bald and seen from the front. The minimal head's ears end high, which makes its box look taller than the eye-to-chin check alone would; the second check is there for that reason. A hairline also changes how long a face looks, and these heads have none, so place it as in how to draw a hairline. Test the numbers on your own references before you rely on them.

A short exercise

Trace the soft-planes head at 0 degrees lightly. Keep the line where its ear lobes end and move the chin down until it sits half the width below that line. Redraw the jaw so it is about four fifths as wide halfway down, then compare it with the minimal head at 0 degrees. Then go the other way: shorten the minimal head's box to a third of its width and see it turn round.

The minimal head at 0 degrees. Left: as drawn, with the chin about half the width below the ear lobes. Right: the same jaw curve, dashed, squeezed into a box a third of the width deep. Nothing else changes, and the face turns round.

The jaw's corner and back edge are placed in how to draw a jawline and the line under the chin in how to draw a chin. The minimal head is Study Pack 04 in Volume 1, and the soft-planes head is 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.