How to draw a symmetrical face, and when it should look uneven

A face drawn from the front that comes out lopsided often has one of two problems. Either the features drifted off the center line while you drew, or you drew a head that's turned a little and gave it a front view's features. This guide gives you numbers for both: how even the front views of ten drawn heads are, and what changes when the same heads turn 22.5 degrees. The numbers describe these drawings, not people's faces.

The heads come from the free head rotation reference. On each front plate and each 22.5 degree plate we read the corners of both eyes, the edges of each iris, the corners of the mouth and the center of the lips, by eye on gridded crops enlarged three to six times, then drew every 22.5 degree point back on the plate to check it. Inner eye corners and irises are easier to read than outer eye corners and mouth corners, which taper.

How even a front view is

Every front plate has a faint vertical center line. Against it, we took the midpoint of each pair: the outer eye corners, the inner eye corners, the irises, the nose wings and the mouth corners. On all ten heads, every midpoint sits close to the line, about 1 percent of the skull's width away or less. The midpoints lean slightly to one side, which is more likely where the faint line sits than the features.

No head's two eyes differ in width by more than we can read: 5 percent at most, and 4 percent or less on eight of the ten. Measured out from the center line, the shorter half of the mouth is about nine tenths of the longer half to almost its full length.

So a front view is even to within about 1 percent of the skull's width, and the two eyes differ by no more than we can read. If your two eyes differ by a fifth, or one half of the mouth is clearly longer, something drifted while you drew; it isn't a variation you copied from the reference.

Check it while you draw

1. Draw the center line first and keep it through the whole drawing, from the hairline to the chin.
2. Draw the pair lines square to it: one through the eye corners, one under the nose and one through the mouth. If one of them tilts, the face tilts with it.
3. Measure out from the center line, not from the last feature you drew. Mark the inner and outer corner of one eye, then mark the same distances on the other side.
4. Flip the drawing. In a drawing app, mirror the canvas; on paper, hold it up to a mirror or look through the back against a window. A lean or a drifted eye you've stopped seeing shows at once.
5. Check the mouth against the eyes. Each mouth corner should land the same distance from the iris above it on both sides. On some heads the corners sit under the irises and on others between them, as face width proportions shows, so match your two sides rather than a fixed rule.

When it should look uneven

Now turn the same heads 22.5 degrees, the angle in how to draw the head in slight three-quarter view. On these plates the face turns to your right, so the far eye is the one on the right; mirror everything for a turn the other way. The face stops being even, in a pattern.

• The far eye narrows. It's about three fifths to nine tenths of the near eye's width on these heads, about four-fifths on a typical head.
• The iris barely changes. Neither iris is clearly smaller than the other. The white of the eye takes most of the loss.
• The far half of the mouth shrinks more than the far eye. Measured from the center of the lips, it's half to about seven tenths of the near half, a little over half on a typical head, and it loses more than the eye on nine of the ten. We didn't measure why; the mouth wraps around the teeth, which probably accounts for it.

That gives you a rough test for a drawing that looks uneven, and the mouth is the part to check first. The eyes alone can't settle it: one turned head's far eye is only 9 percent narrower, close to the 5 percent two eyes on a front view can differ, and within our reading error of it. The mouth halves don't overlap: about nine tenths to nearly equal on the fronts, about seven tenths or less on the turned heads. If the shorter half of your mouth is under about three-quarters of the longer one, and the narrower eye is on the same side, you've drawn a turn: commit to it and curve the center line toward that side, as the slight three-quarter guide shows. If the mouth halves are within about a tenth of each other and an eye is off, it's drift, so go back to the center line and measure. We measured turned heads at 22.5 degrees only, not drifted drawings or smaller turns, so treat this as a rule of thumb.

Common mistakes

• Building each feature from the one next to it. Small errors add up from the eyes to the mouth. Measure every pair from the center line.
• Fixing a turned face by evening it out. At 22.5 degrees, equal eyes look wrong. Keep the far eye about four-fifths as wide and the far half of the mouth a little over half.
• Shrinking the far iris along with the eye. Keep the irises nearly the same size and take the width out of the white beside them.

What else is going on

These are ten drawings in one style, all bald, measured on the front and 22.5 degree plates only. Small differences in the ratios fall within the reading error, so neighboring heads can't be ranked against each other. On the deep-folds head a heavy fold runs on past the near eye's outer corner; we took the corner where the lower lid ends, and taking the end of the fold instead would make that eye much wider. As a working tolerance, a pair that sits more than about 2 percent of the skull's width off the center line is worth fixing.

A short exercise

Draw the soft-planes head from the front at the plate's own size, measuring both eyes and both mouth halves from the center line. Then redraw it at 22.5 degrees. Curve the center line toward the far side and change three things: the far eye at about four-fifths of the near one, the irises the same size, and the far half of the mouth at a little over half the near half. Lay the two drawings side by side and flip each one. The front should look the same flipped; the turned head should look turned the other way.

The soft-planes head is Study Pack 06, sixteen angles in pencil and tone, 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.