How to draw the head in slight three-quarter view

The slight three-quarter view is the head of someone talking to a person just beside the camera. It has turned only about 22.5 degrees, so the temptation is to draw a front view and slide the features to one side. A small turn still changes the center line, the ears and the far side of the face, and a front view with the features shifted doesn't sit on the skull.

The order, in short:

1. Block in the cranium and jaw as you would from the front.
2. Move the center line toward the far side and let it curve.
3. Keep the eye, brow and nose lines at their front-view heights.
4. Draw the near ear and let the far ear go.
5. Shorten the far eye and the far half of the mouth.
6. Lengthen the near jaw line back to the ear.

Curve the center line

Start with the cranium and the jaw as in the front view. Then draw the center line, but move it toward the side the head is turning to and let it curve. It follows the middle of the forehead, bends out over the brow and the nose, back in at the mouth, and out again at the chin. In the 22.5 degree reference you can trace that line on every head.

The heights don't change from the front view: eyes about halfway down, the brow and the base of the nose dividing the face into thirds. The eye and brow lines wrap around the form, so they curve slightly. With the head level and at your eye level they stay almost straight; tip the head down a little, as most of these plates do, and they bow.

Lose the far ear

From the front you see both ears. At this angle the near ear opens up a little and the far one goes behind the head. On the plates it's either a sliver at the far edge of the skull or gone entirely. Two ears of the same size are the clearest sign that the turn wasn't thought through.

The near ear also moves away from the face on the page, because more of the side of the head now shows between the eye and the ear.

Shorten the far side

The far eye is narrower than the near one and sits closer to the nose. The far half of the mouth is shorter than the near half. The nose shows its side plane on the near side, while its far side shrinks to a thin edge.

The far cheek still forms the outline of the face on that side, but only a thin sliver of it shows outside the far eye. If that sliver grows into a wide band, the head has turned back toward the front; if it vanishes and the nose meets the outline, you've drawn a three-quarter view.

Watch where the jaw goes

The near corner of the jaw sits a little lower and further out than the far corner, and the near jaw line lengthens as it runs back to the ear. On the far side it shortens. On a head with a strong lower face, like the square-jaw head, that makes the turn easy to see. On the full-lips head, with its narrow jaw, the mouth does more of the work: the far half of the lips wraps away around the teeth.

Place it between two angles

This view sits halfway between the front view and the three-quarter view. The far eye should be shorter than in the front view but not yet tucked against the nose, as it is at 45 degrees. For the next step of the turn, read how to draw the head in three-quarter view.

To practice the whole turn on one face, the high-cheekbones head is Study Pack 09, sixteen angles in pencil and tone.

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