Facial Proportions and Portraiture

Portraits look realistic when you place facial features in the right spots using simple proportion rules.

Reading is good — doing is better. Practice Facial Proportions and Portraiture as an interactive lesson.

Definition

Facial proportions are the relationships between the sizes and positions of features on a face. Portraiture is the art of drawing or painting a person's face and likeness. When you understand where eyes, nose, mouth, and ears actually sit on a real head, your portraits look much more believable instead of cartoon-like.

Remember the rule

Eyes sit at the HALFWAY point of the head. The face can be divided into thirds: hairline to brow, brow to nose bottom, nose bottom to chin. The width of the face equals about five eye-widths across.

Key words

Proportion: How the size of one part of the face compares to another part, like how wide the eye is compared to the whole face.
Portrait: A drawing, painting, or photo that shows a specific person's face and personality.
Symmetry: When the left and right sides of the face are roughly mirror images of each other.
Midline: An imaginary line drawn straight down the center of the face from forehead to chin, helping you balance features.
Guideline: A light pencil line you draw first to help place features in the right spot, then erase later.
Contour: The outer edge or outline of the face and its features, like the curve of a cheek or chin.
Value: How light or dark a color or shading is, used to make a face look three-dimensional.
Foreshortening: When a face is turned at an angle, some features look shorter or closer together than usual.

Worked examples

Where should you draw the eyes on a head?

→ Measure the full height of your oval head shape. Find the exact middle and draw a light horizontal guideline there. Place the eyes on that line, not near the top of the head. · Most beginners draw eyes too high because the forehead feels small, but hair fills a lot of that upper space.

How far apart should the two eyes be?

→ One eye-width of space goes between the two eyes. So if each eye is 1 cm wide, leave a 1 cm gap in the middle. The whole face is about five eye-widths wide: one eye, one space, one eye, then equal space on each outer side. · This is the five-eye rule and it works for most front-view faces.

Where does the nose end up on the face?

→ The nose bottom sits at the two-thirds mark down from the top of the head, or at the bottom of the middle third if you divide the face into three equal horizontal sections. · The nose is roughly one eye-width wide at its widest point, which ties it back to the same measuring unit.

Where should the mouth be placed?

→ The mouth sits about one-third of the way between the bottom of the nose and the chin. Draw a guideline there. The corners of the mouth line up roughly below the inner edges of the pupils. · Placing the mouth too close to the nose or too close to the chin is a very common mistake.

Where do the ears go?

→ The tops of the ears line up with the eyebrow line, and the bottoms of the ears line up with the bottom of the nose. Ears sit on the sides of the head along the middle horizontal guideline. · Because ears are on the side of the head, beginners often forget to draw them or make them way too small.

How do you start a basic portrait step by step?

→ Step 1: Draw a tall oval for the head. Step 2: Draw a vertical midline down the center. Step 3: Draw a horizontal guideline at the halfway point for the eyes. Step 4: Divide the lower half into thirds to find the nose and mouth. Step 5: Lightly sketch features on the guidelines. Step 6: Refine and erase guidelines. · Working with guidelines first and details last keeps proportions accurate before you commit to final lines.

Common mistakes

Drawing the eyes too high on the head, leaving almost no forehead room.
Making the eyes too far apart or too close together instead of leaving exactly one eye-width between them.
Drawing the ears too small or forgetting that ear tops line up with the eyebrows.
Placing the mouth too close to the nose instead of one-third of the way down toward the chin.
Skipping guidelines and going straight to details, which makes it hard to fix proportion errors later.

FAQs

Why does my face look weird even though I tried hard?

Usually it is a proportion problem, not a talent problem. Go back and check: are the eyes at the halfway point? Is there one eye-width between them? Are the nose and mouth in their correct thirds? Fixing those placements will make a big difference right away.

Do real faces actually follow these rules perfectly?

Not perfectly, and that is what makes each person unique. But these rules describe average human proportions very closely, so they are a great starting point. Once you can draw a proportional face, you can adjust features slightly to capture what makes one person look different from another.

What shape should I use for the head?

Start with a tall oval, slightly wider at the top than the bottom. The bottom should narrow a little to suggest a chin. Think of it like an egg standing upright with the pointed end at the bottom.

Do these proportions change for kids versus adults?

Yes. Children have larger foreheads and eyes relative to their faces, and their features sit a little lower on the head. As people grow, the lower part of the face gets longer, so the adult halfway rule works best for grown-up portraits.

How do I make the face look three-dimensional instead of flat?

Add shading using value. The sides of the nose, the area under the chin, and the sides of the forehead are usually darker. Areas that catch light, like the center of the forehead and the tip of the nose, stay lighter. Blend gently so there are no harsh edges.

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