How to draw a face lit from above or below

Most plates on this site are lit from the front and a little above, and so is a lot of head reference elsewhere. Move the light nearly overhead and the same face turns deep-set and gaunt; move it below the chin and the face turns strange. To draw either, sort the head's planes by which way they face, then shade them for the light you chose.

The figures here are frames from our head lighting reference, volume 1: the same matte clay head with its face toward you, rendered from one camera with the same framing, lit three ways. The eyes are closed in all three; under the middle light the closed lids can read as open.

Sort the planes by which way they face

The planes of the head guide names every plane. For these two lights, three groups are enough.

• Facing up: the top of the skull, the forehead where it rounds back, the bridge and top of the nose, the top of the lower lip.
• Facing down: the underside of the brow ridge (the roof of each eye socket), the underside of the nose, the cheek below the cheekbone, the upper lip, the underside of the lower lip, the underside of the jaw and chin, the neck under the jaw.
• Facing forward: the front of the forehead, the front of the cheekbones, the front of the chin.

A light from above lights the first group and leaves the second in shadow. A light from below lights the second group, and the top of the skull, the plane that faces most directly up, goes dark. The forward group catches some light from both: from above it is lit at a slant, and from in front and below it faces the light almost squarely.

Light from above

In the left frame the light sits high, about 80 degrees above the head's level.

1. The top of the head is the brightest area. The skull and upper forehead take the light most squarely.
2. The eye sockets go dark. The brow ridge shades the socket below it, so a dark band runs under both brows. The upper lids catch some light, so the eyes read as lids set deep inside two shadows.
3. The nose throws a shadow straight down. The bridge and the top of the nose are lit, and a dark shape sits under the tip and the nostrils, short and centered.
4. The cheeks below the cheekbones fall into shadow. The edge runs along the underside of the cheekbone, and from there down to the jaw the side of the face is mostly one dark shape, broken by a little light near the corners of the mouth. This is what makes an overhead light look gaunt, even on a full face like this one.
5. The mouth reads as bands. The skin between the nose and the mouth is lit, the upper lip turns down into shadow, the top of the lower lip catches a bright band, and a shadow runs under it. The front of the chin is a separate lit shape above the dark underside of the jaw and the neck.

Seen from a slight turn, the pattern stays: the shadow sits under the brow and under the cheekbone, because those planes face down. The edge under the brow is sharp. The edge on the cheek is softer and runs on a slant from in front of the ear toward the corner of the mouth. Find these two edges first and draw them as light lines, then fill the shadow below them as one tone.

Light from below

In the right frame the light sits in front of the face and 35 degrees below its level. We rarely see faces lit this way outside a flashlight or a campfire, which is part of why it looks wrong.

1. The top of the head goes dark. The skull turns away from the light, and the shadow sits on the crown like a cap. Its edge is fairly hard, and drawn on a bald head it will read as a hairline, so keep it soft where the skull rounds over.
2. The eye sockets are light. The underside of the brow ridge faces the light, so the sockets that were dark from above are now among the lightest areas on the face.
3. The underside of the nose is lit, nostrils included, and the tip and wings read as one light shape.
4. The underside of the jaw and the neck are lit. No shadow separates the jaw from the neck, so the jawline is held only by the small change in value where the two planes meet.
5. The face itself carries few dark shapes. With the light this close to straight in front, the forward planes and the facing-down planes all take light, so the tones change gently. What looks odd is where the light and dark sit: light in the sockets and under the jaw, dark on the crown.

Drawn from imagination, a light from below often gets heavy black shadows painted upward from the nose and the brows. On this frame the face is mostly light, and the largest dark shape is the cap on the crown. A lower light, or one further to the side, throws longer shadows upward; with the light nearly in front, as here, keep them small.

A light from below is a different thing from looking at the head from below. Tilting the head back changes which planes you see, as in how to draw the head from below, but the shadows still follow wherever the light is.

The middle frame, for comparison

The middle frame uses the light most reference uses: in front, 35 degrees above level, a little to the head's left, which is your right. The shadows sit under the nose, under the lower lip and under the jaw, as in the overhead frame, but they are short, and on the side nearer the light the cheek below the cheekbone is lit. Features read clearly under it, and the planes show less, since so little of the face turns away from it.

Three things that go wrong

Keeping the usual shadows. Under a light from below, a habit of darkening the eye sockets and the neck gives the drawing two lights at once. Go through the facing-down group and keep every plane on it light.

Making the overhead cheek shadow a stripe. Draw the shadow under the cheekbone as the whole lower side of the face, down to the jaw. A narrow band under the bone reads as a hollow cheek under ordinary light.

Leaving the crown blank. Under a light from below, the top of the head is easy to leave as paper. Without its shadow, the light reads as plain front light.

Practice it

Copy the overhead frame, then the frame lit from below, using one flat shadow tone per drawing, as in how to shade a head, one light at a time. Then check every shadow: it should sit on a plane that faces away from the light. If a shadow lands on a plane that faces the light, check whether something casts it, such as the brow over the socket from above; if nothing does, take it out.

The free head lighting reference has eight lights around the head at one height. The overhead light and the light from below are two of the ten in the head lighting reference, volume 1, which shows all ten on four heads at sixteen turns. The volume is also one of the five archives in the head library, with both head rotation volumes, the parts volume and the atlas.

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