How to draw a skull at different angles

A skull drawn from the front only is a mask. To draw one at any angle, and heads that turn convincingly, you need it as three pieces you can rotate: a ball for the cranium, a block for the face and a hinged jaw.

How to draw a skull in four steps

Start with the skull facing you.

Draw the cranium as a ball, then slice a flat plane off each side where the temples are. From the front, those planes are why the skull's sides run nearly straight down instead of curving back in.
Hang the face under the front of the ball. The eye sockets sit about halfway between the top of the skull and the bottom of the chin, and the nose opening starts low between them, above the teeth (measured from the front).
Mark the cheekbones. They are the widest part of the face, and from the front they stand out just under the sides of the cranium.
Draw the jaw as a horseshoe that hangs from behind the cheekbones and narrows to the chin. Its back edges run up toward the ears.

The skull from the front. The eye sockets sit about halfway down, the cheekbones mark the widest part of the face and the jaw narrows to the chin.

Check the halfway mark before you draw any detail. Eye sockets placed too high are the most common reason a skull looks like a cartoon.

Turn it to profile

Turn the skull a quarter turn and the ball takes over. In profile the cranium is most of the drawing, and the face is a smaller block set under its front.

The skull at 90 degrees. The cranium reads as a ball, the face hangs under its front and the jaw sits in its own tilted box.

Two landmarks place everything else in this view. The cheekbone runs back from under the eye socket as a bar to just in front of the ear hole. The jaw hinges there, under the end of that bar, so the back edge of the jaw starts in front of the ear hole and drops to the corner of the jaw.

The three-quarter view

At 45 degrees, the near side plane of the cranium turns toward you and the face starts to narrow. The far eye socket shortens, and the far cheekbone shows only as an edge past it. The near cheekbone sticks out from the side of the face, with its bar running back toward the ear. Measured at 45 degrees.

At 45 degrees the far eye socket narrows, the near cheekbone stands out and the side of the cranium starts to show as its own plane.

This is the angle where the flat side of the cranium matters. Drawn as a plain ball, the skull swells out past the temple and the face looks pasted onto it.

Draw it from behind

From the back, the cranium is a round dome over everything; the face is gone. The corners of the jaw show under the dome, well inside its sides, and the teeth show between them.

The back of the skull at 180 degrees. The dome fills the view and the jaw corners show beneath it, well inside its sides.

Between the back and the profile, at a three-quarter back view, the face has turned away and the ear hole and the back edge of the jaw are the clearest landmarks left. Place them first, then let the dome wrap around them.

At 135 degrees the face has turned away. The ear hole and the back edge of the jaw are the clearest landmarks, with the teeth showing past the jaw.

Measured on the skull turnaround

We measured the skull these figures come from, set level with the jaw closed and rendered with an orthographic camera: no perspective, one scale at every angle. Outlines come from that render; the sockets, the ear hole, the jaw's hinge and the dome's base were read on the drawings and the shaded render and checked by eye. Measurements are shares of the skull's height, top to chin, or of its width; the outlines are the clearest to read, the socket rims less certain and the ear hole the least certain. It's one skull, so take them as one example; a skull seen up close, or tilted, shifts them a little.

On this skull the halfway mark holds. The rims of the eye sockets run from just over two fifths to just under three fifths of the way down, and their middle is almost exactly halfway, read on six columns across both sockets, so a line at half the height goes through their middle.

From the front the skull is about two thirds as wide as it is tall, and widest a third of the way down, above the sockets. The cheekbones stand out a little past the side of the skull just above them, but they stay inside that widest width, about a twentieth narrower. The corners of the jaw are about seven tenths of it, depending on the row taken as the corner, and about three quarters of the cheekbone width, close to nine tenths of the way down.

The skull from the front and in profile at one scale. Front: the dashed line is half the height; the bars are the widest row, the cheekbones (a twentieth narrower) and the jaw corners (about seven tenths as wide). Profile: the ring is the ear hole, and the short level mark runs from under it to the back edge of the jaw.

In profile the skull nearly fits a square: a little over nine tenths as deep as it is tall, and two fifths deeper than it is wide from the front. The cranium alone, brow to back, is a little over a third longer than the front width, so the ball of steps 1 and 2 is round only from the front; from the side, draw it longer than it is wide. The point furthest forward is the tip of the nasal bones, and the brow sits only slightly behind it, about 3 percent of the height. The back of the skull bulges furthest at about the height of the brow, so a level line through the brow crosses nearly the full depth.

The ear hole's middle is a little over halfway back from the front and about five eighths of the way down, a little behind and below the middle of the profile. Its top edge is about level with the bottom of the eye sockets. The jaw's hinge, the rounded knob at the top of its back edge, sits in front of it by about the ear hole's own width (we placed both by eye). From there the back edge of the jaw drops almost straight down, about a sixteenth of the height in front of the ear hole's middle, and turns forward at the corner about nine tenths of the way down.

As the skull turns from the front, its outline widens: about an eighth wider at 22.5 degrees, a little over a quarter wider at 45, a little over a third wider at 67.5 and two fifths wider in profile. Drawn at the front width at 45 degrees, it comes out about a fifth too narrow.

From the back the outline mirrors the front, so the corners of the jaw are the same seven tenths of the widest width and show under the dome without reaching its sides. At the middle, the drawn base of the dome is about two thirds of the way down.

Practice it

Draw the skull at four angles: front, three-quarter, profile and back. Start each one with the ball and its flat side, check the halfway mark for the eye sockets, then hinge the jaw in front of the ear hole. Then check the measured marks: sockets centered on the half line, jaw corners about seven tenths of the widest width, and at 45 degrees an outline a little over a quarter wider than from the front. Five minutes a drawing is enough. Then draw a head over the same construction, since the landmarks you placed here are the ones that show through the skin.

The figures in this guide come from the skull turnaround: one human skull with its jaw, drawn at sixteen angles, 22.5 degrees apart, from a CC0 3D model. How to draw a bald head checks the outline of the skull on a living head. For the landmarks on a living head, see parts of the head for drawing, and for the full turn, how to draw the head at any angle.