Drawing Tutorial 003 - Drawing a head in profile view

1. We start with the oval shape, this time the oval is not symmetrical to its horizontal axis but little tilted to the right (we are drawing a face in profile, nose being on our left). Also the forehead area is little bulging compared to a symmetric oval. As the face is looking horizontally the eye line is straight and cuts through middle of the oval. Position of ear can be marked by drawing a vertical line from top of the oval.

2.  The jaw line starts at the bottom of the oval follows the oval upto the horizontal line in a straighter line and then turns to the ear position. This can be simplified by the two marked lines.

 

3. We start to draw the facial features now. Observe the points of face contour that goes outside oval and which keeps inside. The tip of nose is well outside but the nasion (depressed point between the eyes) is inside the oval contour. The lips and chin touches the oval. Position of tip of nose is little short of half way from eye to chin. Bottom of lips is almost halfway from tip of nose to chin.

4. Add the mouth. the area below the lower lip is depressed and therefore goes inside the oval.

5. The eye sits on the eyeline. The shape of eye is quite different from the front view of eye. Observe the space between the eye and nasion.

6. Lets draw ear in simplest way starting from the intersection of the eye line and vertical line created in step 1. in profile ear is half-heart shaped. The hair contour starting from the forehad ends with sideburn beside the ear. Observe the approximate line where the hair roots end. However depending upon the hair style the sketch has to be refined.

7. When head is straight the neck is a little leaning to the front. We draw the neck by extending the back of skull further down and slanting towards right a little.

8. Now that we have almost drawn the face and its elements, we end the drawing with hair. The hair shape can vary widely as this can be manipulated and shaped in various ways. Here we keep it simple by drawing the standard male hair that can be observed in commonplace. The contour is wavy(this can be smooth in case of a back brushed straight hair) and follows the skull line but a little above the skull to give volume to the hair.

9. We finish with some shading to suggest volume.